ABSTRACT
In Rwanda, and in Cyangugu Remote community near the Kivu Lake, there is high solar sunshine energy, significant wind energy, abundant methane gas, appreciable geothermal energy, peat(biomass), hydro renewable energy sources, and grid power access. To ensure feasibility, accessibility, and sustainability, a balance need to be maintained to optimize this energy mix options, in terms of cost (NPV, COE etc.), maintenance, sensitivity, optimization, and other system parameters. The best combination of these Hybrid Renewable Energy Sources (HRES) considering the community's energy needs, is modelled using the Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Electric Renewables – Professional (HOMER Pro), innovatively, to design and find out the proposed optimum system requirements with environmental advantages or benefits, best payback duration, lower or zero net GHGs and radiation emissions, performance optimization with lest value of Net Present Cost (NPC) and Cost of Energy (COE), sensitivity analysis involving components supply changes like wind speed change based atmospheric conditions, variable sunshine frequencies based on time of the day, seasons, fuel price changes etc. These seven energy supply components is used to provide access to modern, clean and reliable energy to Cyangugu.
