Feasibility Study of an Off-Grid Hybrid Renewable Energy System

In the last few years, due to diminishing fossil-fuel and increasing energy demand, hybrid renewable energy system is becoming more popular. Off-grid hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) is best suited for remote location as it eliminates the requirement of grid extension. Even if HRES is an environment friendly source of electricity generation, but due to the stochastic nature of renewable energy sources, mainly wind and solar energy sources, it fails to provide reliable solutions. The main intent of this paper is to design of an off-grid HRES comprising of wind turbine, biomass gasifier and storage batteries. Thus, in this present study, with the help of appropriate load profile techno-economic feasibility investigation of an off grid biomass based HRES is analyzed for a remote locality where the grid extension is still not a viable choice for the end users. Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is utilized for the sizing, optimization and economic analysis of the system. Also, the various profiles such as wind turbine profile, battery profile of the system are presented. The obtained results recommend that the annualized cost of the system (ACS) for the considered area is found to be in the range of 40130 $/year which is within the standard margin.