Proposal for Single Wire Earth Return Distribution System for Homboza Village Electrification

Rural Electrification Rate (RER) in Tanzania is still low. This is because of huge costs to install conventional three-phase or single-phase power supply to dispersed rural loads. However, there are great efforts done to address this by the Rural Energy Agency and the National utility: Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO). To this end, this paper proposes a Single Wire Earth Return (SWER) electrification scheme to electrify one chosen village called Homboza. Field data are collected and are used to design the possible SWER distribution network. Mathematical model is developed, representing the SWER for Homboza, and simulations are carried out to establish the earth potential and earth resistance. These two are important whenever a SWER line is to be installed. Further, a techno-economic comparison is carried out to establish the low costs of proposed SWER against those of existing Single Phase Two-Wire (SPTW) system. The simulations are performed using MATLAB/Simulink 2013b. Simulation results give SWER earth potential around 18.15 V, and earth resistance of j0.0017 Ω/km. The techno-economic analysis shows that the proposed SWER system can realize a cost savings of 36.9% as opposed to installing SPTW system for Homboza electrification