Optimal design, prefeasibility techno-economic and sensitivity analysis of off-grid hybrid renewable energy system

Abstract

This work aims to find an optimal hybrid renewable system design using solar, wind energy, battery storage, thermal loads, thermal load controller (TLC), boiler, and a diesel generator (DG) for the considered site. The prefeasibility techno-economic analysis has been carried out using HOMER software to meet the load demand requirement of the village. For identifying winning system architecture, minimum net present cost (NPC), lowest cost of energy (COE), and the highest renewable fraction (RF) are used as the criteria. The obtained results show that the least cost-optimal hybrid system consists of 614kW-PV,850kW-WT,800kW-DG, 1212 no. of batteries and 591 kW converter along with TLC-2000kW, having minimum NPC: $5.48M, least COE: $0.272/kWh and highest RF:91.6% can provide 92% reliable power supply to onsite load demand of 4502.95kWh/day with 70% renewable sources in the considered site. This paper also presents a sensitivity analysis of the hybrid system with variations in load demand, diesel fuel price, project lifetime, and interest rate.