A cost-efficient sizing of grid-tied hybrid renewable energy system with different types of demands

An optimum energy management strategy is proposed for a hybrid microgrid system's operation with various types of demands. To endorse minimizing system's project lifetime costs which include capital, replacing, operating, and maintaining cost, exchanged power cost with the grid, and cost of purchased natural gas, an optimization for minimizing operational cost of hybrid microgrid consisting of photovoltaic arrays, wind turbines, battery energy storage, fuel cell, and reformer is presented. To guarantee the benefits of the developed methodology, two different hydrogen production methods are considered. Utilizing battery energy storage is inevitable for mitigating intermittency of renewable energy resources in microgrid system with high level of integration of these components. To assess the optimum energy management strategy of the microgrid system, each source's model is developed to interrelate the energy altering between electricity and hydrogen. In order to ascertain the optimum capacity of each DER unit and the energy management within the system, a meta-heuristic Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO) is used. It is concluded from the results that by utilizing microgrid waste, there is about 8.7%, and by utilizing municipal waste, there is about 27% reduction in the fuel consumption in the employed reformer. It is observed that the cost of energy is reduced by 19% in the case of municipal waste utilization.

Automated summary

An optimal energy management strategy is proposed for a hybrid microgrid system to minimize lifetime costs, including various costs and the cost of purchased natural gas. The study shows that utilizing waste can significantly reduce fuel consumption and energy costs.