The Economic Feasibility of Using Solar Energy in Serving Housing Complexes in Rural Areas

Abstract

In order to overcome the problems associated with the electrical power provision to the remote areas ( which is distributed mainly a long the western and the south western region in Iraq), as well as the problems associated with the petroleum fuel delivery which required for electrical generator a parathion, the population lives in these area should think really about using a new sources of energy for electrical production like solar and wind . As the solar energy is available at high rates during the daylight hours nearly all over Iraq unlike the wind energy which its availability differs from region to region, the solar energy is selected as main source of energy for this study.A typical civilian compound building consist of (50) similar houses were designed to be located in rural region. This building consist, in addition to the houses, of many service building such as (adminstration, meeting hall, mosque, water well, clinic center, six grades school and a shelter for the school and clinic staff ).The electrical power and the fuel consumption required for each of the individual building were calculated. Moreover the solar collector area were estimated taking into consideration the ability for storing energy for at least ( 7 ) hours.The results for this study shows that the required capital investment was about $60000 with a payback period less than (5) years knowing the cell ages as more than ( 20 ) years .