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This study presents a simple evaluation mechanism for the installation capacity of a hybrid energy generation system. The mechanism is mainly applicable to hybrid energy sources, including wind power, photovoltaic (PV), and fuel cells (FC). Demand power is mainly supplied by the PV and wind power, and backup power in case of an emergency is provided by the FC generation system. The aim of the hybrid energy generation system is to suppress the penalty bill caused by exceeding the contract power capacity with the power company and to supply the backup power when needed. According to different installation locations of the hybrid energy generation system, a simple evaluation mechanism for the installation capacity is designed by considering the concept of capacity factor and cost recovery to obtain the ratio of installation capacity. The performance of the proposed evaluation mechanism is verified by numerical simulations of a real campus in Taiwan. The comparison of the proposed evaluation mechanism with two dispatch methods via the rate of capacity factor and the rate of power generation cost is done on the equal basis of 104 kW power requirement provided by the PV and wind power generation systems to avoid the penalty for exceeding its contractual power capacity, and the capacity factors (10.7 and 34.33%) for the PV and wind power generation systems. Numerical results show that the proposed evaluation mechanism has about (45.5%/13.3%) and (18.2%/20%) self-use/selling payback year improvements than two conventional dispatch methods, respectively.

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In this study, an improved particle-swarm-optimisation (IPSO) method with dynamically changing inertia weight and acceleration coefficients is employed in determining the installed capacity selection of a hybrid energy generation system (HEGS). The studied HEGS, which includes wind power, photovoltaic (PV) and fuel cells, is used to suppress the penalty bill caused by exceeding the contract power capacity with the power company and to supply the backup power when needed. The objective is to achieve the optimal ratio of the installed capacity of the HEGS, so that each energy source can make the best contribution in the system, satisfy the load demand at a minimal installation cost and shorten the payback period. To realise this objective, the payback period is selected as the optimisation objective function by considering the installation cost and cost recovery. In the IPSO, the penalty technique is designed to solve the optimisation problem with equality and inequality constraints for updating the particle's position and its global best position. The proposed IPSO algorithm has been examined, tested and compared with other methods on the optimisation problem and proven to be more efficient in searching the global solution through numerical simulations of a real case.

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