Island Energy Autonomy: A Techno-Economic Assessment of a Virtual Power Plant in Bangladesh

Owing to population growth and industrialization, the need for electricity is at its apex, which creates stress on the grid due to the continuous consumption of power. To produce energy, natural resources are utilized ceaselessly, depleting the re-serve for the future. The consistent use of conventional resources is causing global warming along with several natural issues. Therefore, shifting to distributed energy resources (DERs) is a convenient solution. Although many of the developed countries have already implemented virtual power plants (VPP) and are pondering over their improvements, Bangladesh is lacking in this area. Therefore, this paper delves into existing energy scenarios and renewable energy (RE) prospects to design a VPP combining solar and wind for Hatiya Island in Bangladesh, to provide a continuous power supply to the whole region and remove the stress on the grid. The infrastructure of the whole system is developed in MATLAB/SIMULINK, and the techno-economic analysis is also carried out. The simulation outcomes illustrate that the Net Present Cost is 39550818 USD and the Levelized Cost of Energy is 0.03 USDlkWh.