Reliability Support of Undependable Grid Using Green Energy Systems: Economic Study

Abstract

Developing countries’ energy sector faces a multitude of challenges, ranging from inadequate generation to unstable grids. Power outages are among the most common issues, particularly in remote areas. Utilizing grid-tied green energy resources to address this issue and to cover for power outages from local grids. This article presents a cost-effective design of a grid-tied, hybrid green energy system (GES) consisting of wind, PV, and batteries considering the influence of the grid availability. A multi-objective, optimal techno-economic design, optimized by multi-objective particle swarm optimization technique is presented for the grid-tied GES linked to a small hamlet in the north of Egypt. The multi-objective function introduced in this work includes three objective functions which are, the Loss of Power Supply Probability (LPSP), the Cost of Energy (COE), and the System Surplus Energy Rates (SSER) considering the grid availability. The grid availability (GA) of 100% was considered as a base case and it was reduced to 70% with a step of 5%. The simulation consequences had cleared that the lowest and largest percentage values of SSER were obtained at GA of 85 %, and 70 %, respectively. When the value of SSER equal to 0.33%, the system design for solving the grid unavailability consists of 12 PVs, one WT, and 1420 batteries with COE of 0.145$/kWh and TNPC of 3,699,800 ($).