Optimal design and economic analysis of a hybrid renewable energy system for powering and desalinating seawater

The amount of water being consumed by Jordan Phosphate Mines Company (JPMC) at Aqaba city/Jordan country, which is about 10,000 m3/day. Tarek Dehays Aqua Treat Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) desalination station is being operated next to JPMC with a fresh-water capacity of 12,000 m3/day. Thus, the present study is conducted to utilize the renewable energy system to operate this SWRO desalination station. Twelfth power system configures investigated and analyzed based on economic and environmental bases: Diesel generator, Diesel Generator-Battery, Wind-Diesel generator, Wind-Diesel Generator-Battery, Photovoltaic (PV)-Diesel generator, PV-Diesel Generator-Battery-Wind-Diesel generator, PV-Wind-Diesel Generator-Battery, Wind-Fuel Cell-Diesel generator, Wind-Fuel Cell-Diesel Generator-Battery, PV-Fuel cell, PV-Fuel Cell-Diesel generator, PV-Wind-Fuel cell. The comparisons result of hybrid configuration systems based on economic wise as Cost of Energy (COE) shows the optimal hybrid power system configuration is PV-Wind-Diesel Generator-Battery, which has the lowest COE of 0.063 $/kWh, Renewable Fraction (RF) as 98.2% and CO2 emissions as 417,752 kg/year. The second option is the hybrid power system; Wind-Diesel Generator-Battery is advised, which has a COE of 0.063 $/kWh, RF 98.1%, and CO2 emissions of 445,221 kg/year since the Net Present Cost (NPC) of hybrid PV-Wind-Diesel Generator-Batteries system is slightly lower than that of hybrid Wind-Diesel Generator-Batteries system by 0.65%, which saved 72,574 $, more RF, and less CO2 emissions. Still, it needs more land spacing to employ the PV arrays, which require only about 9-10 km2 for PV modules. The cycle dispatch strategy is used for hybrid power cases since it has less NPC and COE than the load following strategy, but it provides less RF and more Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs) emissions. Since it is evaluated as the best cost-effective hybrid system case, the PV-Wind-Diesel generator-Batteries system, thereby for cycle charging strategy, has NPC $11,086,499, COE 0.063 $/kWh, RF 98.2%, and CO2 417,752 kg/year. Whereas, for the load following strategy, it has NPC as $11,966,178, COE 0.068 $/kWh, RF 99.2%, and CO2 272,335 kg/year.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).