Affiliation:
1. Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania
Abstract
The inefficient use of traditional biomass energy sources for cooking and scarce electricity are challenges in the least developed countries. This chapter presents the comprehensive characterisation approach for renewable energy (RE) related resources and sources, which support the measures to address the challenges. The approach's effectiveness is demonstrated in rural semi-arid areas. The demonstration involved sampling and laboratory analysis of cow dung (CD), data collection and analysis of solar irradiance, wind speed (WS), and ambient temperature (AT). In addition, weather data were collected using the novel onsite weather station. Results show that the area has quality CD (C/N ratio of 19), annual average solar insolation and WS of 4.5 kWh/m2/day and 4.7 m/s, respectively. Also, AT varies by 4oC within a day. The results show that the development of RE systems is feasible in the areas. Therefore, the approach is recommended to researchers and RE systems project developers.