Study of economic and sustainable energy supply for water irrigation system (WIS)

Abstract Water irrigation systems (WISs) are an important factor for agricultural development and food security. However, their energy supply is affected by several problems related to the use of diesel generators, especially in remote areas. This paper describes a new methodology used to design a cost-effective and sustainable solution to provide a water irrigation system with a demand of 40 kWh/day. A combined supply side management (SSM) and load shifting (LS) strategy, which is a component of the demand side management (DSM) concept for the design and optimization of irrigation systems, was implemented. HOMER was used to select the appropriate system based on the technical, economic and environmental criteria. A general comparison between the simulated scenarios (PV/Battery, PV/Battery/Diesel, and Diesel generator) was carried out using the cost of energy (CoE), the total net present cost (TNPC), CO 2 emissions and the renewable energy fraction (REF). The results show that the PV/Battery/Diesel scenario is the most optimal and attractive. This optimal system was also simulated with the load shifting strategy. Compared to the system without LS, the results show that the LS offers a 19.25%, 20% and 10.70% reduction in CoE, TNPC and net CO2 emissions, respectively, in addition to the significant savings in the electricity bill cost and REF improvement.