Electrical and Electronics Engineering

This work is based on the design and simulation of a proposed 500kW grid connected PV system using Pvsyst which is desired to take care of 995,161 MWh annual load demand of the Faculty of Engineering, Rivers State University (FOERSU) between the official hours of 8am to 4pm daily using Pvsyst 7.2.6 programming software and the excess energy is sold to the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) through the grid network. The University community has a mean solar radiation of 4.55kWh/m 2 /day as obtained from Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) and an average temperature of 26.61 0 C. The method used is enumeration of electrical load of the Faculty of Engineering alongside their hour of operation to obtain the energy required per day in Watt hour (1523.768kWh) but 2726.48kWh is used for the purpose of selling the excess and also due to load forecast. The energy (2726.48kWh) is divided by an average sun hour of 4.5 hours and the result is again divided by a threshold frequency of 0.77 to get the peak power of the PV module (787kWp). This peak power, tilt angle of 5 0 , grid voltage (415V) are entered into the Pvsyst programming software to chose the number of PV panels in series and parallel and the inverter. The simulation result shows that the annual DC energy the proposed plant generates per year is 1,140,796kWh while the actual AC energy exported to the grid network is 1,114,502kWh/year with a loss of approximately 20%. The effects of weather conditions on the overall performance were looked at. The proposed PV plant is viable and will address the lingering energy crisis in the faculty. A total of 1962 panels are required for this work with 18 panels in series and 109 panels in parallel. Multilevel inverter is used to track the maximum power from the PV array.

Adequate and reliable electricity supply is widely accepted as a sine qua non for the rapid socio-economic development of any nation. Researchers, over the years, have attributed electricity supply failures mostly to dilapidated electrical equipment, poor maintenance culture etc. Only a few considered the contributions of transmission and distribution losses to frequent power outages. This paper fills the gap by focusing on the effects of technical and non-technical losses on power outages in Nigeria. This study emphasizes the need for more radical measures than are currently being applied to reduce system losses and make the nation’s electric power system holistically more efficient.

The typical Nigerian firm incurs huge costs arising from frequent cuts in electricity supply. This paper investigated the impact of power outages in Nigeria's industries for the year 2014 through the simulation of statistical data collected from two hundred and fifty (250) electricity intensive industries drawn from the nation's three major industrial cities using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 16.0. This study found that in 2014 alone, Nigeria's industries spent a whooping N2,558,562,894,261.7 equivalent to 2.26 % of the nation's GDP for that year or 56.9% of the budget for 2015 as a result of power outages. The results further showed that Nigeria's industries suffer low capacity utilization, significant reduction in productivity, low marginal profit and lack of competitiveness in the international market due to perennial shortages in energy supply resulting from high distribution losses. The paper suggested remedial measures to m...