Impact of Using Renewable Energy on the Cost of Electricity and Environment in Northern Cameroon

This paper determines and compares the cost of energy (COE) of various hybrid systems for several off-grid facilities in North and Far North regions of Cameroon by integrating renewable sources and/or storage with diesel generators. The estimated annual energy production by solar PV systems and wind turbines, based on meteorological data provided by NASA, is also discussed. A hybrid system using photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, diesel generators, batteries and converter was designed using HOMER software to supply electricity to these off-grid facilities. Parameters such as investment, cost of energy, total cost, renewable energy fraction, fuel consumption, and GHG emission have been compared over 25 years operation with the use of diesel generators only. It is shown that the use of renewable energies (wind and photovoltaic), despite the fact that it requires large investments initially, is the most economical, most profitable and least polluting system.