Investigation of a reliable and sustainable stand-alone hybrid energy system for freshwater supply: a case study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Hybrid renewable energy system-based reverse osmosis desalination has been identified as a reliable and sustainable solution for supplying potable water to the off-grid communities. In this respect, this study proposes a stand-alone hybrid energy system comprising solar PV, wind turbine, diesel generator, and a battery bank to power a reverse osmosis desalination plant. The proposed hybrid system is optimised using a novel metaheuristic optimisation technique named salp swarm algorithm (SSA) to minimise the three objective functions: levelised cost of energy (LCOE, $/kWh), life cycle emissions (LCE, CO2 kg-eq/yr.), and the excess energy (EE, kWh/yr.). Moreover, the performance of the novel algorithm is scrutinised using the benchmark solutions achieved from the widely utilised non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) and particle swarm optimisation (PSO) techniques. In addition, the study also investigates the effects of water demand and the loss of power supply probability on the techno-economic performance. The results reveal that SSA outperforms NSGA-II and PSO algorithms towards achieving Pareto optimality hence provides financially rewarding solutions. The LCOE for the optimal HES is 0.179 $/kWh, and the LCE is 5921 CO2 kg-eq/yr. with an EE of 402 kWh/yr., whereas the cost of water for this system is 1.37 $/m3.