Empirical Load Profiling and Categorisation for a Hybrid Renewable Microgrid Serving an Integrated Farm in Nigeria

• Vandi JUSU

  Author

• Eugene O. AGBACHI

  Author

• Jibril A. BALA

  Author

Off-grid hybrid renewable microgrids often serve farms that combine livestock and horticulture, yet published sizing studies rarely distinguish loads that cannot be interrupted without harming animals or crops from those that can. This paper presents an empirical load-profiling and criticality-categorisation study of an integrated farm in Minna, Nigeria, comprising a 400-cow dairy unit, a 25,000-bird layer poultry unit, a 10,000-bird broiler poultry unit, and a 5,000 m² greenhouse. Forty appliances, totalling 320.93 kW of installed capacity, were inventoried and disaggregated into hourly dispatch profiles for the Rainy, Harmattan, and Dry seasons. Each appliance was then classified into three biological-criticality tiers, Tier 1 (never shed), Tier 2 (shed only once battery state of charge falls low), and Tier 3 (fully deferrable), following a review process that checked functional consistency against species-specific thermal risk. The tiered profiles were expanded into three parallel, verified annual series covering all 8,760 hours of the year. Statistical analysis showed that the farm-level annual load factor reaches 0.628, giving a peak-to-average ratio of 1.59. Tier 1 alone showed a lower load factor of 0.446 and a higher peak-to-average ratio of 2.24, and was strongly correlated with the dairy milking schedule. The Tier 1 load duration curve remained above 24 kW for 58.1% of the year and never fell below 13.65 kW, a sustained base-load pattern with direct implications for battery-energy and diesel or biogas backup sizing. The novelty of this study lies in combining appliance-level disaggregation, three-season synthesis, and a physiologically justified three-tier criticality classification for a combined livestock-and-horticulture microgrid. The dataset and classification are recommended as a reusable, empirically grounded input for future research on microgrid sizing, reliability assessment, and demand-side management.

• 77_Jusu et al. (2026)

Copyright (c) 2026 Vandi JUSU, Eugene O. AGBACHI, Jibril A. BALA (Author)

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