Case Study of Direct Communication based Solar Power Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa for Levelled Energy Cost using Blockchain

Smart grid (SG) is an information technology-enhanced power grid, which provides a two-way communication network between energy producers and customers. Also, it includes renewable energy (RE), smart meters, and smart devices that help to manage energy demands and reduce energy generation costs. However, SG is facing inherent difficulties, such as security-based reliability issues and energy inadequacy. In addition, existing energy planning models like levelized cost of energy (LCOE) that evaluate the cost of RE do not measure the impact of reliability on energy cost. LCOE is a method used to compare the economic costs of RE and non-RE. However, the main problem of evaluating RE based on LCOE is that it does not consider the fill rate (FR) and service level (SL) effect. This paper proposes a direct communication-based LCOE (BLCOE) model as the least-cost solution that measures the impact of energy reliability on generation cost using FR and SL. The model also considers daily variations in the cost of solar modules and battery storage across sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). Furthermore, Quasi-Newton's method is employed to optimize the capacity of solar module and battery storage. Simulation results show the reduction of energy costs by approximately 95% for battery and 75% for the solar modules. The future BLCOE varies across SSA on an average of about 0.049 $/kWh as compared to 0.15 $/kWh of an existing LCOE used in the literature.