Optimal sizing of a PV/wind/diesel system with battery storage for electrification to an off-grid remote region: A case study of Rafsanjan, Iran

In a hybrid energy system, different energy sources (photovoltaic (PV), wind, diesel, etc.) as well as energy storage devices are connected together to supply the electrical load. Since the produced power of PV and wind turbine (WT) is dependent on the variation of the resources (sun and wind) and the load demand fluctuates, the main attribute of such hybrid system is the ability of satisfying the load at any time and storing the excess energy for the later use in deficit conditions. In this paper, an off-grid hybrid multisource system (PV/wind/diesel/battery) is considered, modeled, optimally sized, and compared with a diesel alone generation system in terms of the total annual cost and environmental emissions. For optimal sizing, a discrete version of harmony search (HS) is used. As an efficient heuristic, HS is easy to implement and can escape from local optima. The decision variables (number of PV panels, wind turbines, and batteries) are optimized by use of HS for having a cost-effective system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.