Techno-Economic Design of a Combined Heat and Power Microgrid for a Remote Community in Newfoundland Canada

Abstract

Around 300 remote communities in Canada rely on diesel for their energy needs, a situation associated with high costs, high emissions, and accessibility problems. Various studies have addressed this problem by proposing renewable energy microgrids, which have a lot of potential due to the abundance and availability of renewable sources. However, there is a lack of studies regarding remote communities in Newfoundland and combined heat and power microgrids. This study chose Cartwright remote community based on consumption and available resources. Both distributed and centralized microgrid components were designed using MS Excel, Polysun, HOMER, and BEOPT. The final system included solar thermal, PV, wind energy, hydroelectric energy and fuel cells for energy generation, and hydrogen as an energy carrier for storage. The solar thermal distributed system reduced the thermal load by 35%. The microgrid reduced diesel consumption by 71% and CO2 emissions by 9000 tons. Renewable sources provided 100% of the electric load and 63.5% of the thermal load. The microgrid achieved a Levelized cost of -0.0245 $/kWh, which is only possible for combined heat and power systems.