ENGINEERING

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 enewable Energy Systems (HRES), specifically the Photovoltaic (PV)-Diesel-Battery configuration, as a technically superior and sustainable alternative for offgrid power. However, a granular, site-specific reliability assessment for the unique and energyintensive 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 niversity 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.

This project aimed to design and implement UnibenEngVault, a web-based platform created to provide engineering students of the University of Benin with centralized and convenient access to academic resources such as lecture notes, past questions, and tutorial materials. The initiative was motivated by the persistent difficulty students face in sourcing relevant study materials due to the lack of a unified and structured digital repository within the Faculty of Engineering. The development followed a structured methodology consisting of project planning and approval, problem analysis, system design, development, and deployment. The UI/UX design was created using Figma to ensure an intuitive and visually appealing interface. The frontend was developed with ReactJS, while the backend was implemented using Python (Flask) and PostgreSQL for database management. AWS S3 was utilized for cloud storage, and deployment was achieved through Docker, GitHub Actions (CI/CD), and DigitalOcean Droplets to ensure scalability and reliability. Security measures such as session authentication, CORS configuration, and bcrypt password hashing were implemented, alongside thorough unit, integration, and user testing. The final outcome is a secure, functional, and user-friendly platform that enables students to easily access department- and level-specific academic materials. UnibenEngVault enhances academic collaboration, improves resource accessibility, and provides a sustainable technological solution to the long-standing challenge of academic material distribution within the Faculty of Engineering