EHIS SAMUEL AMIENGHEMEN

Access to reliable and sustainable electricity remains a significant challenge in many rural areas worldwide. In addressing this issue, off-grid photovoltaic (PV) systems have emerged as a promising solution due to their environmental friendliness, scalability, and decreasing costs. This paper presents the design and implementation of an off-grid PV system tailored for optimal utilization in rural areas. With the aim of addressing the energy needs of a modern 2-bedroom apartment located in a rural community, this study emphasizes the development of a self-sustaining PV system capable of providing reliable electricity access independent of the traditional grid infrastructure. The design process begins with a comprehensive assessment of the energy needs and resource availability of the target rural community and in this case a 2-bedroom apartment. This assessment includes factors such as household electricity consumption patterns, local climate conditions, solar irradiance data, and geographical characteristics. Utilizing this data, the system's components are sized appropriately to meet the community's energy demands reliably. Since, our system will be independent of the traditional grid infrastructure, we made sure that our system will be able to sustain the energy requirement of the two-bedroom residential for an average of 19 hours, this led us to the following system requirement of 15,975W solar panel capacity, 915.2Ah battery capacity and a 4KVA inverter capacity, this translates to using 32 solar panels with each rated 500W, 16 batteries each 12V. The core components of the PV system include photovoltaic panels, charge controllers, batteries, inverters, and distribution systems. Each component is carefully selected based on efficiency, durability, and compatibility to ensure maximum system performance and longevity in rural settings. Furthermore, the implementation phase involves the installation and integration of the PV system into the 2-bedroom apartment. Monitoring and evaluation mechanisms were established to track the performance and impact of the PV system over time. In line with our study, we came to discover that the optimal tilt angle of solar panel in the University of Benin, Ugbowo campus (test location) was 20° which is in line with the reference angle of 0o to 42˚. A DC load test was carried out on the implemented PV system, resulting in a short circuit current of 1.45A and an open circuit voltage of 13.75V. Additionally, a charging test revealed that it took 6.86 hours to charge a 100Ah, 12V battery using a 200W solar panel operating at a voltage of 13.72V. Simulation of the proposed PV system was obtained using the PVSYST simulation software, from the simulation we discovered that the system produces an annual energy of 14,341kWh/year with a performance ratio of 0.515, the daily input/output graph also show variability which is connected to the irradiance and seasonal variations.