Research Repository :: Browsing by Author "Irechukwu, Michael Enyinaya"

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Feasibility analysis of using SWER for Homboza village electrification
(University of Dar es Salaam, 2020-09-25) Irechukwu, Michael Enyinaya; Mushi, Aviti Thadei
The electrification level in Homboza village, one of the many rural areas in Tanzania, is very low. Out of the 5,565 Homboza dwellers, less than 10 percent access electrical energy. The major barriers to improved electrification rates in rural communities are high investment costs of extending the grid to rural areas, and the small, dispersed nature of electricity demand, arising from a population of low density and low-income levels. To overcome these, this paper proposes Single Wire Earth Return (SWER) electrification scheme. This is because SWER's installation costs are about one third of a three-phase system and a half of the single phase system. This paper presents a Carson line model of SWER for Homboza village and is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink, and for comparison, a single-phase system is simulated too. The simulation results show that the earth potential between the ground electrodes is 18.15 V for the SWER. Further, SWER shows 10.07% voltage drop and 10.34% power loss over 20 km of distribution line, while single phase system shows 18.89% voltage drop and 19.58% power loss over the 20 km of distribution line. There is a possibility of supplying Homboza using SWER technology.