Design and Parametric Analysis of a Stand-Alone Solar-Hydro Power Plant with Pumped Water Storage Technology

Abstract

There is a global over reliance on fossil fuel for energy generation which has triggered global alarm on climate change due to greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel. These harmful effects of fossil fuel on the environment have tilted global effort towards harnessing renewable energy sources which is obviously the future of energy. In this paper, the design and parametric analysis of a stand-alone solar-hydro power plant using pumped water storage technology is presented. It is aimed at addressing the growing concern of bulk energy generated from renewable energy sources. The paper adopted the University of Uyo main campus as its case study site, performed a load demand profile assessment on a section of the campus, obtained the meteorological data of the site, and designed a 250 kVA solar-hydro power plant with pumped storage technology. The results of the Matrix laboratory (MATLAB) simulation revealed that when the generating head of the upper reservoir was increased from 20 m to 100 m, the required generating flow rate decreased from 1.0994 m3/s to 0.2199 m3/s. It also revealed that, an increase in the pipe diameter from 0.2 m to 1 m, decreased the equivalent head losses from 337.04 m to 0.0878 m.