Sizing and techno-economic analysis of stand-alone hybrid photovoltaic/wind/diesel/battery power generation systems

This paper introduces a new proposed design and optimization simulation program for the techno-economic sizing of a stand-alone hybrid photovoltaic/wind/diesel/battery energy system using the iterative optimization. The main function of the new proposed simulation program is to determine the optimum size of each component of a hybrid renewable energy system for the lowest price of generated energy and the lowest value of dummy energy at highest reliability. An accurate methodology for pairing between five Saudi Arabia sites and ten wind turbines from different manufacturers to maximize energy production and minimize the price of the generated power is introduced. This methodology changes the penetration ratio of the renewable energy sources in certain increments to meet the load requirements of the sites under study. A detailed economic methodology to obtain the price of the generated energy is introduced. The new proposed simulation program is implemented in flexible fashion, which is not possible for the market-available software, such as HOMER, INSEL, TRNSYS, and RETScreen. The results obtained from the new proposed simulation program are compared with those from genetic algorithm and HOMER software to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed program. Many valuable results can be extracted from the proposed program to assist researchers and decision makers. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.