Designing of an Emergency Energy Module for relief and refugee camp situations: Case study for a refugee camp in Chad-Sudan border

Each year thousands of people get displaced and are forced to live in refugee camps or relief camps because of man-made or natural disasters. These people often lack basic needs such as clean water, lighting, cooling, etc. and many times these camps exist for more than 7–8 years. This paper aims at conceptualizing an Emergency Energy Module (EEM) which provides electrical energy to satisfy the basic needs and that can be deployed as an emergency response in a self-sufficient, self-contained, and highly mobile fashion, to support the energy demand of a refugee or a relief camp and the aid workers for long term. As a case study, a refugee camp near Chad-Sudan border has been investigated. As a preliminary study, electrical demand was determined for the camp. Further, locally available energy resources were studied and assessed based on key design criteria and the technologies were selected to meet the demand. Polycrystalline Solar PV panels, micro wind turbine and biogas polyethylene digester and diesel generator were chosen as the technology to harness selected energy resources. HOMER Software has been used for optimization and techno-economic analysis of the energy system. The selected solution has been, then, analyzed from an operational point of view.