Techno-economic evaluation of an organic rankine cycle-based multi-source energy system for 100%-renewable power supply: A rural case study

In remote areas, providing electricity through grid-connected energy systems or transferring fossil fuels would be economically infeasible. A stand-alone hybrid renewable energy system is considered as an effective solution to supply electricity to remote areas' populations. In this study, the techno-economic feasibility of a solar-driven ORC/Photovoltaic/Wind Turbine/Battery system is investigated to electrify a 927-household remote village. To this end, first, the annual performance of a solar-driven ORC unit including parabolic trough collectors, an ORC, and a heat storage bank is optimized by MATLAB software. Based on the results of Genetic Algorithm optimization process, the yearly average efficiency of this unit reaches more than 15.06%, 22.64%, and 30.23% at the collector areas of 1000m2, 1500m2 and 2000m2, respectively. Then, the annual generated power output of the solar-driven ORC unit is imported into the HOMER algorithm to find the most appropriate hybrid renewable solution according to the geographical and financial characteristics of the remote village. The optimum configuration comprises the ORC/PV/WT/Battery when the collector area is 1000 m2; the energy cost is obtained as low as 0.275 $/kWh. The proposed system also shows compatibility with the environment since it prevents more than 1000 ton/year of CO2 emissions compared to the Iranian power grid.