Abstract— People in rural areas at present are still beyond the coverage of pure and fresh water for their daily usage。 However, these constraints offer an opportunity for green technology to embrace the people’s needs and shortages。 Vast source of solar energy and sea water allows the community to reach their dream by using desalination process to convert salty sea water to pure and fresh drinking water。 This paper presents the optimization design of photovoltaic power system for desalination process of sea water located at Kuala Perlis as the selected site。 The reliable and low power consumption of distillation process is selected for this off-grid power system。 The optimization design includes site selection, load selection, system sizing and costing。 Then, HOMER is used to verify the feasibility of this optimized design。 Experimental setup is then further verified the performance of this desalination system。84619

Keywords-Desalination; Homer; off-grid; photovoltaic (PV); desalination

sustainable which are not depleted substantially by continued use。 Furthermore, social injustices are not the issues as the resources are universal energy sources rather than dominated by certain countries [1]。

Fig。 1。 Percentage contributions of various energy sources to world primary energy consumption in 2002。 (BP, 2003; United Nations, 2000)

I。INTRODUCTION

Trend of adapting renewable energy sources in power generation plants take place currently in the world throughout the nations as attempts to cut down greenhouse gas emissions by reducing fossil fuels consumption in power plants。 Renewable energy sources that currently used for power generation plants are solar, wind, hydro, wave, tidal, geothermal power and biomass。 It is highly expected that rapid development of renewable energy sources based power plant will result cheaper price of energy cost in the near future。

Currently, world energy sources are highly dependent on burning fossil fuels such as natural gas, oil and coal which contribute 75。9% of overall energy sources。 Another 5。7% is met by nuclear power and the rest of 18。4% are supplied by renewable energy sources。 The correspondence data are shown in Figure 1 as reported in BP, 2003 and United Nations, 2000。

The main contributor for renewable energy sources is hydro power of 63。45% which is illustrated in Figure 2。 Renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, sea, biomass and geothermal power do not cause any significant environmental pollution or substantial health hazards。 Those are the pollution free   sources   with   plentiful   power。   These   resources  are

Fig。 2。  World Renewable Energy 2005。

II。DESALINATION METHOD

Desalination is several processes that remove some amount of salt and other minerals from water to produce fresh water for human consumptions [2]。 Nowadays, it becomes a challenge to develop a cost-effective  desalination technique for rural areas where fresh water supplies are lacking。 However, desalination may become a good solution for water stress region where the location is near to the beach but not for places such as deep in the jungle and desert or elevated area。 It is more economical to transport fresh water to these areas rather than desalinate it。 Besides, this desalination mini plant can be used in emergency relief conditions where tsunami and other   natural   disasters   occur   in   remote   locations。 These

disasters normally destroy infrastructures to supply electricity and water supply。

Current environmental concerns about ocean water desalination plants are green house effects and hazardous gas emissions from these plants。 Thus, photovoltaic may become one of the best solutions to power desalination plant。 In this project, optimization design for desalination of sea water using photovoltaic power system will be further explained later。 This green power source will benefit rural communities where utility companies are too far to reach their places。