Abstract
As one of world lead exporter palm oil, Malaysia has generated a lot of waste from the production of palm oil. One of the high produced waste is palm oil mill effluent (POME). POME can be utilized as fermentation media, fertilizer, and biogas. Biogas is produced through the process of anaerobic digestion. It has the potential as energy sources because biogas is a mixture of gas consists of CH4 and CO2. It can be used for cooking; vehicle fuel and also can operate the generator. To generate electricity, Malaysia still highly dependent on fossil fuel which is far from the concept of sustainable development. There is some part of the rural area still do not have electricity. The government has taken action in solving the issue by installing solar panel to generate electricity. However, solar is intermittent energy source. Therefore, biogas can be one of alternatives to solve the intermittent problem. Compressed biogas will be used as fuel for biogenset. In this study, techno-economic analysis of biogenset and hybrid solar-diesel-battery for rural electrification is performed. The economic assessment is conducted in term of profit and payback period by using the extracted data. Based on the economic assessment result, it shows that using biogenset for electricity generation is more profitable compare to hybrid solar-diesel-battery due to its high capital cost. The total profit of biogenset is 77,708.05 MYR and the payback period for biogenset also shorter than hybrid solar-diesel-battery which is 8.65 y.
