Standalone Solar Photovoltaic Electricity Supply to Rural Household in Tanzania

Limited access to electricity is a prevalent challenge in rural areas of most developing countries. This is majorly a result of economic, logistic and topographic challenges that limit the extension of grid network to such areas. The use of renewable energy sources (RES) to supply electricity to individual home is considered to be the best rural electrification approach since these resources are readily available and their sustainability can be ensured. Technical and non-technical analyses are carried out in hybrid optimization of multiple energy resources (HOMER) pro software to determine optimal configuration of renewable energy sources. The Particle swarm optimization (PSO) method has been implemented in MATLAB for the minimization of net present cost (NPC) under the given scenarios. In HOMER, total NPCs for solar photovoltaic system (SPV) and diesel generator (DG) of the same capacities are $ 3,013 and $ 28,116, respectively. In the PSO technique, costs are reduced to $ 2,089 and $ 19,488, respectively. This study will be a milestone for rural electrification.