Investigating the role of the carbon tax and loss of power supply probability in sizing a hybrid energy system, economically and environmentally

Abstract

Today, the use of renewable energy-based hybrid energy systems is widely welcomed due to their reduced environmental impact. Therefore, it is vital to optimally design these systems in terms of economy, reliability, and CO2 emissions. This work presents a new method based on Newton's Law of Gravity to achieve the above goals. For this purpose, the role of the carbon tax and the loss of power supply probability (LPSP) in sizing the hybrid energy systems is evaluated. Hence, distinct combinations of wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and diesel generators are optimized by providing single and multi-purpose functions. Also, to produce cleaner energy, the carbon tax is enacted as a penalty function to control CO2 emissions. Furthermore, in this work, 45 cases are analyzed for achieving an optimal framework and some of the results obtained by the gravitational search algorithm (GSA) method are compared with the simulated annealing (SA) method. Therefore, according to the meteorological data, a PV/Wind/DG system with a total annual cost of 56,175 $/year and CO2 emission of 110,086 kg/year is suggested for the study area. In this case, by claiming a carbon tax of 0.05 $/kg, about 9 % of CO2 emission is prevented, and damage to human health is reduced by 8.9 %. Also, the outcomes display that more than 95 % of carbon dioxide emission is associated with using a diesel generator.