Distributed Generation for Village of Hope

The Village of Hope is an orphan community located in rural Zambia. The community is made up of several buildings of a variety of uses and schedules. They are currently tied to the grid, which is unreliable due to rolling blackouts for 2 to 4 hours per day. The community is looking for a financially beneficial solution to their electrical needs. A system optimization and sensitivity analysis was performed to determine system recommendations for the community. It was found that wind turbine systems supplementing a grid connection is the most realistic solution for the Village of Hope. However, there were many other factors identified that require further analysis to be able to truly optimize the system.