2018 International Conference on Computer Communication and Informatics (ICCCI -2018), Jan.

04 – 06, 2018, Coimbatore, INDIA

HOMER Based Optimization of Solar-Wind-Diesel

Hybrid System for Electrification in a Rural Village
Suresh Vendoti Dr. M. Muralidhar Dr. R. Kiranmayi
Research Scholar, Professor, Professor and Head
Department of EEE, JNTUA Department of EEE, SVCET Department of EEE, JNTUCEA
Ananthapuramu, India Chittoor, India Ananthapuramu, India
E-mail:sureshvendoti@gmail.com E-mail:muralidhar6666@gmail.com E-mail:kiranmayi0109@gmail.com

Abstract—Electrification of rural and remote areas with limited
or no access to grid connection is one of the most challenging
issues in developing countries like India. As a result of the recent
issues regarding the global climatic change and reduce fuel costs,
finding out reliable, ecological friendly renewable energy sources
to satisfy the rising energy demands has become important. The
government of India initiated a large number of schemes for
encouragement of renewable energy for power generation and to
create energy options like coal, oil etc. Keeping these initiatives in
mind, the present study is focused on optimization of hybrid
(solar-wind-diesel) renewable energy systems in rural remote
village Indiganatha in Chamarajanagar District of Karnataka
State, India. The objective of the study is to minimize the total net
present cost of generation and cost of energy using HOMER pro
software. Sensitivity analysis is also carried out that helps to
assess the effect of uncertainty or changes within the variables
and finding the most optimal solution for hybrid energy system.
Keywords- Homer Pro Software, HRES, Rural Electrification,
Cost Optimization, Sensitivity Analysis.
I. INTRODUCTION
Electrification demonstrates a essential part in the progress
of a nation and for providing facilities to the residents in urban
or rural regions [1]. Grid-based electric supply to the rural
remote areas is not possible because of a few uncertainties.
Also, conventional based power generations are huge and
expensive because of high fuel cost, ozone depleting substance
discharges.
Over the years, many scientists worldwide carried lot of
tests to check the strategy, control procedure, and practicality
of hybrid energy applications. They suggested that the hybrid
(solar and wind) energy based systems are more successful
than other conventional sources of the power generations in un-
electrified regions. Single source of operation of that power
unit's worthiness is not powerful in relations of cost, efficiency,
and reliability. The alternate solution for this is by
consolidating the distinctive sustainable energy sources to
make the hybrid energy systems. Hybrid energy systems are
clean, contamination free, biodegradable with ease and least
establishment period.
Sustainable energy sources are reliable, clean, pollution
free and will give a probable solution for supplying the
required electrical load. Because of the liability in the
availability of sustainable energy sources, the appropriation of
an electrical energy to these remote regions has expanded in
system reliability. A hybrid energy system creates at least two
or more locally available sustainable energy source based
systems and will be a cost-effective solution to meet the energy
demand of these remote areas [2].
An HRES system uses at least two locally accessible
sustainable energy source based systems and might be a cost-
effective solution for a meet the energy demand of remote
regions. Further, such HRES systems are non-contaminating,
reliable and diminish the total working and maintenance cost
[3]. In order to use them accessible sustainable energy sources
efficiently and economically, optimal models are required to be
developed to take care of the demand for these resources. In
any case, the modeling of an IRE system is an extremely
complex task which requires the development of mathematical
models for every component [4]. M.S. Ismail et al. [5]
proposed an economical intelligent hybrid system for a small
rural group. They suggested that the system is extremely
beneficial related to the utility grid. Rajanna and R.P. Saini [6]
recommended a GA based ideal IRE model for the off-grid
remote rural region. They worked out the deficiency in energy
and customer interference cost for different optimization power
factor to evaluate the system reliability. Hakimi et al. [7]
developed a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based
intelligent method applied to the problem of sizing in hybrid
power systems for a residential community. Alireza et al. [8]
built up a grid based hybrid control system for electrification to
a small load area in Kerman, Iran. They found that
PV/WT/battery hybrid control system is the most economically
viable and reliable for meeting the energy demand of the
proposed area.
This paper deals with size and cost optimization of hybrid
renewable energy system (HRES) for an un-electrified village
Indiganatha in Chamarajanagar district of Karnataka state,
India. The details of study area, load profiles, and resource
assessment of renewable energy potential available of the study
area has been collected and reported in the paper. Finally,
considering the optimal sizing of a hybrid system with different
combinations of resources has been performed to select the
cost-effective solution for the study area.

978-1-5386-2238-4/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

 2018 International Conference on Computer Communication and Informatics (ICCCI -2018), Jan. 04 – 06, 2018, Coimbatore, INDIA

II. METHODOLOGY B. Load and Resources Assessment

The analysis is acknowledged that one un-electrified village
is considered in the Chamarajanagar district in Karnataka
state, has been observed to be the most suitable area. This
study objective is to give a minimum total net present cost and
cost of energy based hybrid system for supplying power to
meet the energy need of the proposed study area.
A. Study Area
Karnataka state comprises of 30 districts and occupies an
area of 191,976 km2. The entire region of the area is 5676 km2
with 4 Blocks/Talukas: Kollegal, Gundlupet, Chamarajanagar,
and Yalandur. Kollegal block has been well thoroughly
considered and recommended to establish a site for
electrification. Chamarajanagar majorly consists of hilly terrain
and the plain area is more fertile than the plateau. Most of the
area of the district is under forest cover which plays an
important role not only ecologically, but also economically.
The study area has one un-electrified village namely
Indiganatha in which the average number of houses are 250
and average population is around 600 [9]. Location of the area
is shown in figure 1 and general information of the rural village
is given in Table II.
The seasonal energy demand of the study area has been
estimated based on the number of households and population
of the villages. The total energy demand was estimated based
on synthesized hourly load for different sectors (domestic,
community, and commercial). The estimation of total energy
requirement of the village was done based on minimum
desirable load and a load details of the village is given in Table
I.
The typical energy demand of proposed area for summer
and winter is 512.91 kWh/day, and 403.09 kWh/day
respectively. Further, total yearly demand has been combined
through HOMER Pro software based on estimated value of
regular monthly hourly load profile is shown in figure 2.
Figure 2. Regular monthly load profile of the village

Figure 1. Schematic map of the proposed location [10].

 2018 International Conference on Computer Communication and Informatics (ICCCI -2018), Jan. 04 – 06, 2018, Coimbatore, INDIA
TABLE I. LOAD DETAILS OF DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF THE VILLAGE
Operating Hours
No’s in Power Rating Energy Kwh
Load Sectors Parameters Appliances (h)
used (watts)
Summer Winter Summer Winter
Lights 500 30 8 8 120 120
TV 250 100 8 9 200 225
Domestic load
Radio 250 15 5 4 18.75 15
Fan 250 60 6 0 90 0
Refrigerator 1 1500 24 1 36 1.5
Health Centre Light 3 30 6 3 0.54 0.27
Fan 3 60 6 3 1.08 0.54
Lights 12 30 5 4 1.8 1.44
Community load Fan 12 60 8 0 5.76 0
Primary School
Pumping Water 1 1500 4 4 6 6
Street Light 10 60 12 12 7.2 7.2
Lights 1 30 4 3 0.12 0.9
Panchayath Hall
Fan 1 60 6 0 0.36 0
Lights 2 30 5 4 0.3 0.24
Commercial Shops
Flour mills 1 5000 5 5 25 25

TABLE II. GENERAL INFORMATION OF THE VILLAGE The first step in the optimization of hybrid system
Country India performance is that the modeling of individual components.
Bhandari et al. [11] provided the comprehensive mathematical
State/Province Karnataka
modeling of HRES comprising of small hydro-solar and wind
Name of district Chamarajanagar generation systems. Modeling process allows recognizing and
Name of block Kollegal understanding of a situation, identifying the problem and
supporting the decision making.
Name of the Villages Indiganatha
Latitude 12o00.30N TABLE III. AVERAGE AND PEAK LOAD OF THE VILLAGE
Longitude 77o40.50E
Particulars Details
Elevation from mean sea level 736m
Average (kWh/d) 512.91
Total Population of village hamlets 600
Average (kW) 21.37
No. of houses in village hamlets 250
Peak (kW) 92.53
Literates (No’s) 100
Load factor 0.18
Illiterates (No’s) 500

In the proposed study area, solar energy, and moderate

wind speed are available in sufficient amount. Monthly average
solar radiations and wind speed in the study area is 5.26
kWh/m2/day, 2.82 m/s is shown in figures 3 and 4. The load
requirement considered should be maximum hourly load
consumption. Table III shows the average and peak load of the
study area.

Figure 4. Monthly average wind speed of the village.

The details of modeling are reflected by its correct

Figure 3. Monthly average solar radiation of the village.
prediction of performance; however, it's too sophisticated or
eminently time-consuming to design an absolute model. A
competent applicable model should be a tradeoff between
intricacy and delicacy. Performance of unique component is
either modeled by deterministic or probabilistic approaches
[12]. The overall methodology for modeling of HRES is based
on average and peak load of the study area. The power output
 2018 International Conference on Computer Communication and Informatics (ICCCI -2018), Jan. 04 – 06, 2018, Coimbatore, INDIA

of solar PV, wind turbine, Diesel Generator, Converter, and TABLE V. COST SUMMARY OF HRES COMPONENETS
Battery has been estimated using mathematical functions as
Diesel
given in Table IV [13, 14]. Quantity generato
Batter Convert PV Wind
y er array turbine
r
TABLE IV. MATHEMATICAL FUNCTIONS USED FOR 6V,
ASSESSMENT OF OUTPUT POWER OF ALL SYSTEM COMPONENTS Size (kW) 100 20-60 50 3
241Ah

Renewable Capital (Rs) 1,91,730 9721.88 19,173 1,91,730 11,50,380

Energy
Mathematical Functions Replacement(Rs) 1,91,730 9721.88 19,173 1,91,730 11,50,380
System
Components
O&M (Rs/yr) 0 1296 0 639.1 23,007
Solar
Photovoltaic PSPV = η inv × H T × A SPV
Lifetime (year) 15000 hr 10 15 25 20

Wind
Turbine The total net present cost is used as a financial measure for
Generator assessing of the hybrid control system. It incorporates net
present capital cost, O&M cost, replacement, and fuel cost of
Diesel the extensive number of expenses occur over the total system
CF = α P2 + β P + γ
Generator components and it can be expressed as
Converter /
Pinv (t) = ݉ (‫ )ݐ‬/ = η inv
Inverter TNPC = CNPV + O&MNPV + RNPV + FCNPV (5)
max
Battery Pb = Nbatt × Vbatt × Imax / 1000 In order to compute the TNPC of capital cost, O&M cost,
replacement, and fuel costs and optimal sizing of all system
III. PROBLEM FORMULATION components, for example, solar PV, wind turbine, diesel
generator, converter, and battery have been determined keeping
A hybrid control system has been proposed to keep running
in mind to get the optimal cost of hybrid energy system.
over energy demand in different load sections in Indiganatha
village. Optimization includes the optimal sizing and cost of
the hybrid energy system with reliability parameters as OPF. IV. HOMER BASED OPTIMIZATION
COE is considered as a key function for the analysis of the cost HOMER Programming (Created by National Renewable
of hybrid system in the study area. It can be expressed as [13, Energy Laboratory, USA) is utilized to build up the hybrid
14]: renewable energy system in these studies. It contains design
and simulation at the optimized conditions with expected
COE (Rs/kWh) = TNPC x CRF (γ, τ) / ∑8760t=1 Egen (t) (1) constraints. HOMER is a novel programming to make an
advanced model operation for planning of hybrid energy
To change the total net present cost to the annually capital systems and as well as grid integrated systems.
cost, capital recovery factor (CRF) is utilized and characterized A. Simulation
by the following equation.
The simulation system is basically subject to the selection
of components chosen by the designer. HOMER makes the
CRF = (γ (1 + γ)τ )/ (γ(1 + γ) τ- 1) (2)
total operations of the system; along this procedure, the system
The proposed system has been optimized based on the development of many quantities of components and its size.
concept of optimization power factor (OPF) and Expected Also this study, the hybrid energy system needs to be analyzed
Energy Not Supplied (EENS). The equation used for to solar PV, wind turbine, diesel generator, battery, and
calculating EENS is given below [14]: converter. The simulation analysis chooses the best dynamic
planning and a system design which is a function of the
EENS = ∑8760i=1 L . D (3) electrical demand. HOMER also performs the total cost of
hybrid system, and determines the capital cost, replacement
Where OPF is considered as an energy index ratio used to cost, O&M cost, fuel cost and so on.
evaluate reliability of the HRE system which can be defined as
one minus the ratio of EENS to total energy demand of the B. Optimization
system (Eo). OPF can be expressed as;
Optimization process is associated to the different
components synthesis of the HRES in conversion. HOMER
OPF = 1 – EENS / Eo (4)
finds the combination of system operations in view of capital
cost along with net present cost, and COE. It is used to
For HOMER based modelling, cost factor varies for the differentiate between various hybrid systems on lower TNPC
various system components. It includes capital cost, operation to the higher TNPC.
& maintenance cost, and replacement cost and fuel expenses of
the system components. The cost summary of the proposed
system is given in Table V.
 2018 International Conference on Computer Communication and Informatics (ICCCI -2018), Jan. 04 – 06, 2018, Coimbatore, INDIA
C. Sensitivity Analysis
Sensitivity analysis is the variable that has no control over
that the designer. The HOMER again integrates the hybrid
energy system established on the sensitivity variable chosen by
the designer. The sensitivity factors are the world solar
radiation, cost of wind turbine, cost of the battery and cost of
the fuel in a diesel generator. In development, the list of
different components of HRES will be considered from the
lower to the higher TNPC. The consequences of the system
demonstrate the best component and are getting by concerned
about the most reduced TNPC [15].
The proposed HRES comprises of solar PV, G3 wind
turbine, Gen100 diesel generator, SAGM 06 220 battery, and
converter shown in figure 5. In this paper, PV and wind turbine
energize the total load demand of the proposed village. The
excess energy delivered from PV and wind turbine is stored in
the battery. In the peak load operations, the generator gives the
total energy demand along with solar PV.
Figure 5. HOMER simulated model for proposed area.
V. RESULTS AND CONSIDERATIONS
This paper presents the simulation results of hybrid
renewable energy system using HOMER Pro software on the
basis of optimization process by considering with and without
the impact of sensitivity variables.
A. Simulation Results without sensitivity
The project’s time period is considered to be 20 years with
an annual discount rate of 50. The optimal combination of
hybrid power system components for our case study is a 50 kW
PV-Array, 3kW wind turbine, 100 kW DG, Trojan SAGM 06
220 Batteries, and 20-60 kW inverter. This system is
considered at 2.82 m/s of wind speed and 31.95 Rs. /liter of
diesel cost.
The total net present cost, capital cost and the cost of
electricity (COE) for such a hybrid system are Rs. 25,
74,552.23, Rs. 47,20,708.95 and 60.267 Rs/kWh, respectively.
The COE of 60.267 Rs. /kWh from this hybrid system is
expensive than that of 55.63 Rs. /kWh from grid extension as
considered for this study. Thus grid extension does not appear
to be a viable choice to meet the village load. But, if the cost of
electricity from the grid supply goes up to 55.63 Rs. /kWh, grid
extension becomes viable. It is found that the wind resources in
Bedaguli still at a lower stage not possible for a wind turbine to
generate the electricity.
Figure 6 shows the monthly distribution of the electricity
produced in kW by the PV and DG. From the figure, the diesel
generator is generally combined with PV are used from
November to January. Also, the peak load is met by PV, and
DG from June to August. The PV operates at full load along
the year and produces 78,378 kWh/year, achieving a capacity
factor of 26.3% (see Table VI). Only during the winter months,
once solar radiation is insufficient, diesel generator becomes
the dominant producer. For the chosen system the diesel
generator operates for capacity factor 73.7% and produces
2,20,888 kWh/year and consumes 33,58,519 liters of fuel.
Figure 6. Monthly usual electricity generation from the hybrid system.
B. Simulation Results with Sensitivity
The system has three sensitivity variables PV size; battery
size and power converter size are considered during this
analysis. The village load at 512.91 kWh/d, 92.53 kW peak,
this method would possibly majority contains 50 kW PV array,
1 unit of a 3 kW Wind turbine, organize 100 kW of the DG, 12
to 36 units of Batteries and 20 to 60 kW of the ability
Converter. For every of the sensitivity values, HOMER
simulates all the system components in their various search
spaces.
For optimization results (Figure 7) shows that the
development of hybrid energy system, it comprises of initial
capital cost, total net present cost (TNPC), cost of energy,
renewable fraction, diesel in litters and generator in hours and
so on. The system operation will be seen that the lowest COE
is Rs. 60.267; Total NPC is Rs. 25,74,552 and the highest is
COE is Rs. 69.02; Total NPC is Rs. 2,58,45,600.
TABLE VI. ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION OF HYBRID SYSTEM
COMPONENTS
Production kWh/yr Percentage %
PV array 78,378 26.3
Diesel Generator 220,888 73.7
Total 2,99,267 100
From Sensitivity results, the PV, Diesel Generator, Battery
and Converter primarily based hybrid system is appropriate for
stand-alone loads around study area. The results presents the
cost of capital, net present cost and cost of energy for such a
hybrid system is Rs. 47,20,708.95, Rs. 25,74,552.23, and
60.267 Rs. /kWh respectively. The suggested price for diesel at
the study area is 31.95 Rs. /liter.
Wind resource within the selected site still at the lowest
stage and not cost-effectively viable to operate the wind
turbine. Hence, we need some improvement in designing of
such hybrid power system to produce the energy i.e. called for
commercially feasible.
 2018 International Conference on Computer Communication and Informatics (ICCCI -2018), Jan. 04 – 06, 2018, Coimbatore, INDIA

VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, an optimized hybrid renewable energy systems
model is proposed. The model comprises of locally accessible
different renewable energy sources specifically solar, wind,
and diesel generator together with battery storage system to
deliver the power in various load sections in the Indiganatha
village in Chamarajanagar district, Karnataka state, India. The
model has been developed to minimize the overall net present
cost and cost of energy and it will be achieved through
HOMER Pro software. Based on the optimization, the cost of
energy is found to be 60.267 Rs. /kWh and therefore the total
net present cost is Rs. 25,74,552.23. Based on the results, it
has been found that proposed model (PV-Diesel) will give a
feasible solution for this study area. If the wind resources
within the study area at the lower stage, it’s not economically
viable for a wind turbine to generate the electricity.

Figure 7. Optimization results of the best hybrid system configuration

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