Techno-economic analysis of a hybrid renewable energy system for an energy poor rural community

Grid-independent hybrid renewable energy systems (HRESs), being eco-friendly and cost effective, are turning out to be more effective option for the rural areas where grid power availability is poor. This paper presents the techno-economic analysis and optimum design of a HRES, as proposed to meet out the residential and agricultural electric load requirements of an energy poor community of Yamunanagar district in the State of Haryana, India. Three different optimal configurations, viz. wind/battery, PV/battery and wind/PV/battery are compared in respect of net present cost (NPC) and cost of energy (COE) to determine most economically viable option. For economic analysis and optimum sizing, all the necessary modelling and simulation is carried out using HOMER (Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable) software. From the simulation results, it is established that wind/PV/battery based HRES is the most cost-effective configuration for the specific location this investigation is about and also the optimum sizes of the different components are obtained. Further, for technical analysis, a MATLAB/Simulink model of the optimized system is built and its effectiveness is demonstrated in terms of maintaining active power balance between the different components of HRES as well as keeping DC link voltage (V-DC) and output AC voltage constant, irrespective of variations in solar irradiance, wind speed and connected load. The novelty of this work lies in using both HOMER and MATLAB simulation tools sequentially to carry out techno-economic analysis of the proposed HRES and validate the proposition.