Technical, economical and environmental comparative analysis of a Microgrid using battery and pumped hydro storage for remote area electrification in southern Algeria

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the techno-economic and environmental performance of the hybrid energy system (HES) to meet the electricity demand of an off-grid community and the dump load in the Indalek village located in the southern of Algeria. Different combinations of HES, such as PV/FC/DG/battery (BESS) and PV/FC/DG/Pumped hydro storage (PHS), are modeled, analyzed and compared using HOMER software. The techno-economic environmental performance analysis has evaluated the net present cost (NPC), the cost of energy (COE), excess electricity (EE), a fraction of renewable energy (RF) and CO2 emissions of the different combinations of HES. The simulation results show that the BESS hybrid energy system has the best feasibility technoeconomic performance with the least NPC, COE and the higher EE of $438335.21, $0.1423/KWh, 36222 KW/year, respectively. On the contrary, the HES with PHS has the highest fraction of renewable energy of 87.4% and the most environmentally friendly with 96.43% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to the HES with BESS. Finally, the sensitivity analysis is performed on the hybrid energy system with BESS shows that the improvement of the derating factor with the increase load leads to a lower the COE.