Cost Effective Microhydro-based Microgrid Schemes for Rural Electrification in South Africa

South Africa generally has good renewable resources, specifically with regards to solar. However, the microhydro potential is also relatively high especially in the Eastern Cape, where the most of the unelectrified areas are located. A large amount of research has been carried out on hybrid microgrids as a solution to rural electrification. However, a limited amount of research has been carried out on single source microhydro-battery microgrids. As a result, microhydro as generation source for unelectrified rural areas in South Africa is investigated with particular emphasis on the technical and economic factors affecting these systems. It is unclear how the strength of the microhydro resource affects the cost metrics of a microhydro system, as a result this will form the basis of the investigation in this paper. Furthermore, the impact of constructing the dam on the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) analyzed to determine the feasibility of carrying this out for small scale systems.