Imperial College London
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Dr. Clementine Chambon

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering

 
 
 
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Contact

 

c.chambon13

 
 
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Location

 

Bone 329Bone BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Chambon:2020:10.1016/j.renene.2020.03.002,
author = {Chambon, CL and Karia, T and Sandwell, P and Hallett, JP},
doi = {10.1016/j.renene.2020.03.002},
journal = {Renewable Energy},
pages = {432--444},
title = {Techno-economic assessment of biomass gasification-based mini-grids for productive energy applications: The case of rural India},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2020.03.002},
volume = {154},
year = {2020}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - As the costs of solar PV continuously decrease and pollution legislation imposes less burning of agricultural residues, decentralized renewable energy is increasingly affordable for providing electricity to one billion people lacking access to a power grid. This paper presents a techno-economic feasibility case study of biomass gasification in off-grid and grid-connected mini-grids for community-scale energy application in rural Uttar Pradesh, India. Energy demand data was collected through surveys in a village with irrigation and agro-processing loads and off-grid households and used to construct a seasonal load profile based on statistical methods. This was used to simulate single-source and hybrid mini-grids based on solar PV, biomass gasification and diesel generation using HOMER Pro. Hybrid PV-biomass or PV-diesel systems were found to offer the highest reliability for off-grid power at the lowest cost. Single-source PV was cheaper than biomass gasification, though the cost of electricity is highly sensitive to biomass supply and gasifier maintenance. Both renewable options were around half the cost of diesel generation. The findings held across grid-connected systems with weak, moderate and strong reliability of grid supply. This suggests that biomass gasification-based mini-grids are not cost-competitive with PV unless the two generation sources are combined in a hybrid system, though they require operational testing prior to implementation.
AU  - Chambon,CL
AU  - Karia,T
AU  - Sandwell,P
AU  - Hallett,JP
DO  - 10.1016/j.renene.2020.03.002
EP  - 444
PY  - 2020///
SN  - 0960-1481
SP  - 432
TI  - Techno-economic assessment of biomass gasification-based mini-grids for productive energy applications: The case of rural India
T2  - Renewable Energy
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2020.03.002
UR  - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148120303165?via%3Dihub
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/77249
VL  - 154
ER  -
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