Techno-economic assessment of a hybrid system for energy supply in the affected areas by natural disasters: A case study

Abstract

Natural disasters are considered as severe humankind’s challenges, which would make a large number of people homeless. Hence, it is vital to provide people with temporary shelters, energy, and freshwater. The purpose of this article is to find the most reliable and economical way to supply energy and water for the residential and health care containers in the different climatic conditions of Iran. Accordingly, a stand-alone hybrid energy system, including solar panels, small wind turbines, fuel generators, and battery banks is taken into consideration. The main objective of this research is to estimate the impact of various parameters such as the project lifetime, dispatch strategies for hybrid system control, and salvage on the optimum system. In addition, a sensitivity analysis regarding the economic and climatic parameters is performed to generalize the results for other areas. The results show that the cycle charging strategy is an appropriate controlling method for a hybrid system, especially for the short-term projects, in which the salvage value causes a high economic uncertainty. In addition, the study indicates that, due to the uniform power generation profile and the affordable cost of energy ranging from 0.130 $/kWh to 0.167 $/kWh, the hybrid system could be practically attainable. For the long-term project, the optimal renewable fraction is between 31.9% and 55.2%; while, for the short-term project, this value is between 12.5% and 21.4%. In the optimum dispatch strategy, for the project lifetime between 4 and 20 years, the impact of salvage on the final cost of the system would vary from 30% to 3%. These results highlight the importance of the salvage parameter in the economic viability of renewable systems.