Energy Management and Optimization of a Standalone Renewable Energy System in Rural Areas of the Najran Province

Electricity demand is increased due to the exponential rise in consumption in the residential, industrial, and transportation sectors as the human comfort level increases with each passing year. Most countries rely on conventional fuels, especially natural gas, to fulfill their energy demand, which increases the risk of reservoir depletion of conventional fuels. In this regard, the adoption of energy generation through free and environment-friendly renewable energy resources such as wind turbines and solar photovoltaics is increasing rapidly. However, the fluctuating and intermittent nature of renewable resources requires the integration of advanced control mechanisms and power electronics to ensure power quality and system resilience towards disturbances. Standalone microgrids comprising renewable source-based distributed generation systems are becoming the ideal solution to fulfill the need for decentralized small residential communities. This research work focuses on the optimal design and techno-economic analysis of a standalone microgrid for a small residential community in Sharurah City in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. HOMER Pro and MATLAB/Simulink have been used for the optimal design of microgrids and energy management using intelligence-based control mechanisms in between generation and load, respectively. The electricity price obtained from the optimized microgrid system is 0.18 SAR/kWh, which is quite low in comparison to generation through a base system (0.38 SAR/kWh) and a diesel generator, respectively. A simulation of the optimized system was modeled and verified using MATLAB/Simulink. The obtained results show the robustness of the presented system against the change in load demand and meteorological conditions.