Dean Gesuri | MEL Candidate | Dec 16, 2022
Mentor: Mary Vasey, Barkley Project Group
Abstract
The majority of Indigenous communities in British Columbia still rely on diesel generation for heat and power. Despite its reliability, diesel generation has a negative impact on the communities and the environment. The transition to clean energy remains critical for Indigenous communities as it aligns with the Climate Change Accountability Act. By shifting away from diesel generators and other fossil fuels to renewable energy for electricity generation, greenhouse gas emissions and the cost of electricity can be reduced.
This capstone project aims to explore the feasibility of renewable energy technologies to generate electricity and the potential application of a green hydrogen storage system to store electricity in two First Nation communities in British Columbia, Mowachaht Muchalaht and Dzawada’enuxw. The primary goal is to decrease net present cost (NPC) and cost of electricity (COE), as well as minimize diesel fuel dependence while considering technological restrictions. The optimal configuration has the highest renewable penetration and the lowest fuel use possible while maintaining costs below a diesel generator base case. The overall performance of the ideal system design may be improved even further by using any extra energy generation that is not used by the load in hydrogen production, hence boosting overall system efficiency and dependability. HOMER Pro software was used to simulate different system configurations and determine the most feasible option by eliminating the unfeasible ones (those that do not adhere to the user-specified constraints), ranking the feasible ones based on total net present cost, and then presenting the feasible system configuration with the lowest total net present cost as the ideal system configuration.