Optimal Sizing and Management of Hybrid Wind Turbine-Diesel-Battery System for Reverse Osmosis Seawater Desalination in NEOM City

Optimal sizing and management of hybrid wind turbine-diesel-battery system for reverse osmosis seawater desalination in NEOM city is the objective of the paper. Therefore, the paper explored the different factors to optimize and introduce a technoeconomic evaluation and energy management of a stand-alone wind turbine (WT) system, diesel generator (DG), and battery storage (BS). The suggested WT/DG/BS system is implemented to feed seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) unit in NEOM. The necessitated desalinated water per day is 100 m3. To determine the optimal size of WT/DG/BS corresponding to the minimum cost of energy (COE) and net present cost, two different ratings of the SWRO units (SWRO-100 and SWRO-150), three control dispatch strategies (load following, cycle charging, and combined dispatch), and five types of batteries are considered. HOMER software is performed to simulate and optimize the WT/DG/BS. The optimization results indicated that the best battery storage is the Trojan SAGM battery. In this case, the COE ranged between $0.337/kWh and $0.564/kWh. The lowest COE of $0.377/kWh is obtained when using a combined control strategy and SWRO-100 unit, whereas the worst COE of $0.564/kWh is obtained when using load following control strategy and SWRO-150 unit. The best option of the WT/DG/BS system to supply the SWRO unit is option number 26. This system includes one wind turbine of 90 kW, DG of 25 kW, 47 Trojan SAGM batteries, a 23.8 kW converter, a SWRO-100 unit, and a combined control strategy. The net present cost and the initial cost are $950,725 and $221,495, respectively. The annual operating cost and annual consumed fuel are $56,409 and 36,396 L, respectively. Compared with using only a 25 kW diesel generator, the COE reduced from $0.373/kWh (using only DG/BS) to $0.337/kWh (using the best option) by around 9.65%. Under this condition, the values for the internal rate of return, return on investment, and simple payback are 11%, 7.8%, and 8.3 years, respectively.