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Libya
Zakariya Rajab, Mohammad Zuhier and Ashraf Khalil
Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering, University of Benghazi
Benghazi, Libya
Zakreia.hassan@uob.edu.ly
Abstract— In Libya, the current energy is produced by fossil electricity. It is estimated that Libya has a great potential for
fuel. In the future, as the energy demand will increase solar energy with a daily average solar radiation ranging from
dramatically, due to increasing of the population and to build a about 7.1 kWh/m2/day on a horizontal surface in the North to
new infrastructure. Libya spire for higher living standard this about 8.1 kWh in the southern region. The average sun
can be satisfied through sustained development of using
duration of more than 3,500 h per year means it is equivalent
renewable energy in its electric power markets as a part of their
basic infrastructure. Introducing alternative energy supply is to a layer of 25 cm of crude oil per year on the land surface.
considered to be promising a superior approach to solve this Similarly, wind energy potential is great in many regions in
problem. For example, solar energy is capable of providing some Libya especially the coastal strip where average wind speeds
or all the power required in the country systems also improves range from 6 to 7.5 ms−1 [2].
the environmental problems. The general loads in the country are
classified in eight main types. The residential and the street The current status and the future potentials of renewable
lighting are represented about fifty percent of the total load. The energy applications in Libya show that the power in the
residential loads presents thirty percent of the total load. earth’s wind and in solar radiation, which reaches the earth, is
Conventional water heaters present a higher percentage of the
more than sufficient to make significant as well as strategic
energy consumption. Which is represented of around 30% of the
residential sector and 10% of the total energy consumption. contributions to the country’s energy supply. This pushes step
These percentages urge to the importance of establishing a towards the integration of the subjects of renewable energy
national strategic plan to replace the conventional water heaters and energy efficiency into the national agenda. The
with the domestic solar water heater (DSWH). The study of the Renewable Energy Authority of Libya (REAoL) has
economic potential of DSWHs in saving electricity, capital cost, established a target of 10 % renewable energy by 2025, which
maintenance cost reducing carbon dioxide emissions, will be would account for a total capacity of 2,219 MW. Intermediate
studied by using RETScreen software. targets are 389 MW by 2015, and 1,069 MW by 2020 [3].
Keywords— Libya; Solar water heating system; Solar energy;
Saving electricity, RETScreend.
I. INTRODUCTION
Libya is a rentier economy where oil and gas account for
98 % of Gross domestic product (GDP), that reveals that the
country has a fairly one-sided economy that heavily relied and
still relies on the occurrence of fossil fuels, that is, oil and gas.
It is the second biggest North African country spreading over
an area of 1.76 million km², located between Algeria and
Tunisia in the west and Egypt in the east, bordering the
Mediterranean Sea in the north, and from west to east Niger,
Chad, and the Sudan in the south as shown in Figure 1.
Almost all its land territory is land area apart from access to
the Mediterranean Sea about 1,770 km of coastline [1].
This is a rich country in renewable energy resources. It has
the potential to produce the equivalent of almost seven million
barrels of crude oil per day in energy. It could generate
enough renewable power to meet its own demand and a
significant part of the world energy demand by exporting Fig. 1. The geographic situation of Libya.
The residential load forms around 30% of Libya electricity This is an one of the area that the Libyan government
consumption. The irrational use of electricity has increased needs to consider in order to cut down on energy consumption.
dramatically in the last few years. This will lead to more There is a need to use heating from solar technologies and
consumption for the precious gas and oil [4]. replace electric heating with solar water heating system
Renewable energy is one of the alternatives that could play (SWHS) to reduce both wastage of energy and peak load.
great role especially in Domestic Solar Water Heating systems
(DSWHs) which can create awareness among people and may
help to reduce the irrational use of electricity [5].
Fig. 2. Types and percentage of gas and fuel used in electricity generation
II. THE STATE OF CURRENT ENERGY IN LIBYA
in 2012
The General Electricity Company of Libya (GECOL) is a
state owned company and is responsible for the generation,
transmission and distribution. Libya has installed twelve
power plants which are capable of supplying 8.347 GW while
the available capacity is 6.357GW [7]. The energy sector
relies on the natural gas, heavy fuel oil and light fuel oil with
the percentages shown in Figure 2. The GECOL increased the
dependence on the natural gas in order to reduce the CO2
emission. The GECOL has difficulties in meeting the
increased electricity demand, One of the most important issues
which is a challenge to the load management engineers in each
electrical energy system is electrical load forecasting. The data
obtained from GECOL is presented in Figure.3. The figure
demonstrates the peak load of the general network in Libya
during the period 2002–2013 with annual increase rate of
about 10%, taking into consideration the drop in consumption
in 2011 due to political instability [8]. The figure also depicts
data about power electrical demand forecasts and expansion in Fig. 3. The distribution of energy consumption among several load types.
production during the period 2013–2020; these last data are
based on strategic studies by GECOL [8].
The energy consumption is distributed among several load III. THE RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES IN LIBYA
types as shown in Figure.4. The residential load is the most
dominated load with 31% of the total consumed energy. The The renewable energy has been used in Libya back to the
street lighting is around 19% of the energy consumption. seventies, the main applications are for powering small remote
While the other 50 % is distributed in commercial, loads such as communication repeaters, rural electrifications,
agricultural, water, Man Made River and industrial [10]. water pumping and Cathodic Protection for the oil pipelines in
the desert. The latest project was the construction of Al-Fattaih
The water heating (WH) is one of the major area of wind farm at the end of 2010 for production of 60 MW as a
domestic households energy consumption with around 29.82% first stage of renewable energy development with project cost
as shown in Figure.4, which mean that WH consumes nearly about 184 Million Libyan Dinar With the ever increasing
10% of total electricity [10]. According to total electricity demands on the energy, the renewable energy sector in Libya
generation by GECOL in 2012, which produced about 33,980 planned a number of projects in the last decade [9].
GWh [8]. Therefore the annual electricity used for domestic
water heating was around 3398 GWh. The proposed projects are mainly solar energy and wind energy
systems, which are the best renewable energy alternatives in
Libya.
IV. SOLAR POWER POTENTIAL IN LIBYA
The Geographical location of Libya makes it one of the
countries blessed with high Solar Energy. Solar energy is
believed to be the most important and feasible renewable
energy source in Libya. Libya lies within the most favorable
sunny zone (between 150 N and 350 N). The rain falls is below
150 mm in most of the country. For example, the average solar
radiation in Libya is around 7.5 kWh/m2/day with about 3000
to 3500 sunshine hours per year [4]. The solar radiation in
different cities in Libya is shown in Figure.6.
Fig. 4. Electrical peak load demand and forecasting. Data source [9].
TABLE IV. CO2 EMISSION FOR THE STREET LIGHTING SYSTEM D. Widespread analysis to all Benina houses
Fuel type Gas Light fuel oil Heavy fuel oil The total of residential household in Benina is around 5000
Conversion 0.185Kg 2.518Kg CO2 2.764Kg units
Factor CO2/KWh /liter CO2/liter
Fuel TABLE VI. COMPRISON BETWEEN EWH AND SWH SYSTEMS FOR 5000
37228.737 m3 282.528 barrels 236.194 barrels
Amount HOUSES
CO2 006,887 113,469 104,128 Electric water heater Solar water heater
emission Kg CO2 Kg CO2 Kg CO2
(EWH) (SWH)
CO2 social
1670$ 27,522$ 25,257$ Capital cost $ 2,200,000 11,000,000
cost
Maintenance
4,000,000 2,500,000
Cost $
Total Cost
TABLE V. COMPRISON BETWEEN EWH AND SWH SYSTEMS FOR TYPICAL 6,200,000 13,500,000
without fuel $
HOUSE
The Electricity
207,850,000 36,375,000
Electric water heater Solar water heater cost $
(EWH) (SWH) Total Cost
214,050,000 49,875,000
with fuel $
Capital cost 220 2200 The gas social
16,700,000 2,925,000
Maintenance Cost $
400 500 The LO social
Cost 275,220,000 48,165,000
Total Cost Cost $
620 2700 The HO social
without fuel 252,570,000 44,200,000
The Electricity Cost $
20,785 7275 Total Cost,
cost 230,750,000 52,800,000
Total Cost (Gas fuel) $
21,405 9975 Total Cost,
with fuel 489,270,000 98,040,000
The gas social (LO fuel) $
1670 585 Total Cost,
Cost 466,620,000 94,075,000
The LO social (HO fuel) $
27,522 9633
Cost
The HO social
25,257 8840
Cost
Total Cost,
(Gas fuel)
23,075 10,560 I. CONCLUSION
Total Cost, In this paper, we propose replacing the electric water
48,927 19,608
(LO fuel)
Total Cost, heating system with solar water heating system. The two
46,662 18,815
(HO fuel) alternatives are compared in terms of the fuel cost, capital
cost, maintenance cost and the CO2 emission. On the other
hand the EWH system in Libya is nonrenewable and
unsustainable and the SWH system is the optimum solution
C. RETScreen results analysis for a typical household because Libya struggles to satisfy the energy demands and it is
The cumulative cash flow analysis result, produced by difficult in mean time to build new power plants.
RETScreen for the basic scenario without incentives and As Libya depends on the oil and gas for electricity
grants, is shown in Figure.9. generation, these will reduce the country revenue when the
load demands increase in near future. Furthermore the
adoption of the SWH system in Libya reducing the CO2
emission. RETScreen was used to investigate the SWH system
in Libya through case study for the 5000 households in Benina
region. It was found that the total energy saving for the Benina
region is around 767,630 MWh. The total saving in CO2
emissions are 44,765 t/CO2 when gas fuels used, 737,548
t/CO2, 676832 t/CO2 for light oil and heavy oil fuels
respectively.
REFERENCES