Performance evaluation of metaheuristic techniques for optimal sizing of a stand-alone hybrid PV/wind/battery system

This study presents a performance evaluation of ten metaheuristics optimization techniques that are applied to solve the sizing problem for a stand-alone hybrid renewable energy system including a photovoltaic module, wind turbine, and a battery (PV/WT/Battery). The algorithms include genetic algorithm (GA), cuckoo search (CS), simulated annealing (SA), harmony search (HS), Jaya algorithm, firefly optimization algorithm (FA), flower pollination algorithm (FPA), moth flame optimization (MFO), brainstorm optimization in objective space (BSO-OS), and the simplified squirrel search algorithm (S-SSA). The optimization process aims to minimize the total net present cost (TNPC) of the system while maintaining the acceptable deficiency of power supply probability (DPSP). The levelized energy cost and the relative excess power generated criteria are also considered. The studied algorithms have been simulated for four DPSP values (0%, 0.3%, 1%, and 5%), each for 50 independent runs. Based on the simulation results, FPA and SA demonstrated high robustness and accuracy with zero standard deviation and a 0% increase in the TNPC values compared to the optimal solutions. The FAO showed the best performance in terms of execution time with an average of 6.32 s, followed by BSO-OS (6.36 s) and SA (7.84 s). The SA has the best compromise between robustness, accuracy, and rapidity, and is found to be the best option to solve the sizing problem. The FPA is the most advantageous in case the execution time is not crucial for the optimization. Our findings will be a good reference for researchers to select the best technique for the sizing problem.