Multi-objective size optimization and economic analysis of a hydrogen-based standalone hybrid energy system for a health care center

Abstract

The main contribution of this study is the multi-objective size optimization of a standalone hybrid energy system (HES) to supply the electricity demand of a health care center in Kerman province, south of Iran, in which fuel cell, photovoltaic, and diesel generator produces electricity, while the combination of electrolyzer and hydrogen tank is the storage system. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) is applied to find the Pareto front of optimal solutions, where the loss of power supply probability (LPSP) and total net present cost (TNPC) are the objective functions. The results show that considering operating reserve and uncertainty, the TNPC increases 30.50% compared to the base load. Moreover, the fuel cell has a smaller share of energy production, which is due to the high cost of the storage system, while about 50% of the demand load is provided by DG in the cold seasons. The sensitivity analysis reveals that TNPC decreases by 8.93% for a 50% reduction of the storage system cost, while increases by 24.55% for a 50% increase in the fuel cost. Moreover, AHP/TOPSIS-based multi-criteria decision-making is implemented to find the best solution according to the opinions of three different managers/experts, which shows that the HES with LPSP = 0.2503% and TNPC = 2.1038 × 106 $ is the best solution in which uncertainties and operating reserve are also considered.