Nur-E-Alam, M.; Hoque, M.N.; Ahmed, S.M.; Basher, M.K.; Das, N. Energy Engineering Approach for Rural Areas Cattle Farmers in Bangladesh to Reduce COVID-19 Impact on Food Safety. Sustainability2020, 12, 8609.
Nur-E-Alam, M.; Hoque, M.N.; Ahmed, S.M.; Basher, M.K.; Das, N. Energy Engineering Approach for Rural Areas Cattle Farmers in Bangladesh to Reduce COVID-19 Impact on Food Safety. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8609.
Nur-E-Alam, M.; Hoque, M.N.; Ahmed, S.M.; Basher, M.K.; Das, N. Energy Engineering Approach for Rural Areas Cattle Farmers in Bangladesh to Reduce COVID-19 Impact on Food Safety. Sustainability2020, 12, 8609.
Nur-E-Alam, M.; Hoque, M.N.; Ahmed, S.M.; Basher, M.K.; Das, N. Energy Engineering Approach for Rural Areas Cattle Farmers in Bangladesh to Reduce COVID-19 Impact on Food Safety. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8609.
Abstract
This paper reports on the optimization of thin-film coating assisted self-sustainable off-grid hybrid power generation systems for cattle farming in rural areas of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a lower middle-income country with declining rates of poverty among its 160 million people due to persistent economic growth in conjunction with balanced agricultural improvements. Most of the rural households adopt a mixed farming system by cultivating crops and simultaneously rearing livestock. Among the animals raised, cattle are considered as the most valuable asset for the small/medium-scale farmers in terms of their meat and milk production. Currently, along with the major health issue, the COVID-19 pandemic is hindering the world’s economic growth and has thrust millions into unemployment; Bangladesh is also in this loop. However, natural disasters such as COVID-19 pandemic and floods, largely constrain rural smallholder cattle farmers from climbing out of their poverty. In particular, small and medium-scale cattle farmers face many issues that obstruct them from taking advantage of market opportunities and imposing a greater burden on their families and incomes. An appropriate measure can give a way to make those cattle farmers’ businesses both profitable and sustainable. Optimization of thin-film coating assisted self-sustainable off-grid hybrid power generation system for cattle farming is a new and forward-looking approach for sustainable development of the livestock sector. In this study, we design and optimize a thin-film coating assisted hybrid (photovoltaic-battery-generator) power system by using the Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER, Version 3.14.0) simulation tool. An analysis of the results has suggested that the off-grid hybrid system is more feasible for small and medium-scale cattle farming systems with long-term sustainability to overcome the significant challenges faced by smallholder cattle farmers in Bangladesh.
Keywords
Cattle farming; COVID-19 pandemic; economic point of view; food safety; HOMER; hybrid system; smallholder; thin-film coating
Subject
Engineering, Energy and Fuel Technology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.