K. O. Ogbeide

The chronic unreliability of Nigeria's national power grid necessitates a dependency on costly and environmentally damaging diesel generators, particularly for critical institutions like universities. The literature validates Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems (HRES), specifically the Photovoltaic (PV)-Diesel-Battery configuration, as a technically superior and sustainable alternative for off-grid power. However, a granular, site-specific reliability assessment for the unique and energy-intensive load profile of a Nigerian engineering faculty represents a significant gap in existing research. This study addresses this gap by providing a bespoke techno- economic analysis and reliability evaluation for a standalone hybrid power system for the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Benin. This research adopts a simulation-based methodology centered on the Hybrid Optimization Model for Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) Pro software. The analysis is founded on a comprehensive on-site electrical load survey, which determined the faculty's detailed operational patterns and an annual energy demand of 737,686 kWh. This granular, real-world load profile, along with local solar irradiance and ambient temperature data for Benin City, was used to model, simulate, and optimize thousands of system configurations. The primary objective of the optimization was to identify the component sizing (PV array, battery bank, and diesel generator) that meets the faculty's load with the highest reliability at the lowest possible life-cycle cost. The simulation results identified an optimal system configuration consisting of a 525 kW PV array, a 198 kWh Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), and an 85kW diesel generator relegated to a backup role. This system achieves 100% reliability with zero unmet load, a 100% renewable energy fraction, and a highly competitive Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of $0.0548/kWh. The analysis confirms that this configuration completely displaces the need for diesel fuel, thereby eliminating significant operational costs and preventing approximately 553 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. The findings conclusively demonstrate that a properly sized PV-Battery hybrid system is a technically reliable, economically superior, and environmentally sustainable solution to the faculty's energy challenges.