Abstract
Developing countries have an abundance of renewable energy sources but the implementation of cost effective projects, to harness this energy and provide a support system to the ever-increasing demand from the conventional sources, are rare. Rapid depletion of fossil fuel resources and the environmental concerns associated with them make electricity generation from certain alternate sources increasingly important for the future. This project presents a system running solely on renewable energy sources. It utilizes solar energy and biomass as fuels in a combined cycle power plant to provide clean energy to the rapidly developing city of Maninagar in India. The solar and biomass parts of the plant will share turbines and connecting infrastructure, reducing the project cost and allowing continuous power generation. The plant can provide peaking power using a combination of the two, regardless of the time or weather. Operating strategy is designed to maximize solar energy use. The biomass is used to provide fuel during cloudy periods. The turbine-generator efficiency is optimal at full load, therefore the use of biomass supplement to allow full load operation maximizes plant output. The cost assessment of the project remains the most crucial part in planning of a non-conventional energy based power generation system. Different approaches to energy conversion from solar and biomass sources, the financial risks involved and the future aspects are presented with the anticipated costs for the planned project.