Techno-Economic Feasibility Study of Autonomous Hybrid AC/DC Microgrid System

Abstract

Distributed generation technology based on diesel generators often has been considered as a viable solution to providing power to remote areas, but the sky-rocketing of diesel fuel price and the increasing cost of delivery to such remote sites have called for providing a sustainable solution that is environmentally friendly, economical, afordable, and easily accessible. To this end, the use of locally available energy resources is accepted as a sustainable solution in providing electricity for rural and remote setlements. The system cost of wind and solar energy systems is continuously decreasing because of the increase in the acceptance and deployment of the energy systems based on these renewable energy resources. A standalone hybrid AC/DC electric power system is designed, modeled, simulated, and optimized in HOMER Pro. HOMER is a Hybrid Optimization Model of Electric Renewable that enables the comparison of electric and thermal power production technologies across an extensive variety of applications. Both cycle-charging and load-following dispatched strategies are investigated. Plausible selected system components ratings are chosen for the simulation to ensure that there is enough search space for HOMER Pro to obtain an optimal system coniguration. Net present cost (NPC) is used as an economic metric to assess the optimal coniguration that is technically feasible.