Optimal Sizing of Stand-alone Hybrid Photovoltaic-wind-battery Energy System using PSO

The optimization of a photovoltaic-wind-battery hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) for a site in the Northeast region of Brazil is undertaken in the present paper. A yearlong of hourly measured weather and load profile data of the location were used and the chosen optimization method was Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The main goals of the study were to fulfill the electricity demand of the chosen site by designing an optimization problem based on the Net Present Cost (NPC). The basic configuration chosen for the problem is a photovoltaic-wind-battery system given the much favorable weather condition for solar and wind energy systems at the site. The results show that the PSO could size the system for the set of defined constraints, minimizing the total cost for the 4 scenarios proposed. The optimal results for the proposed case study showed that a hybrid renewable energy system is less costly than a single source photovoltaic-battery or wind-battery system for most scenarios. It is also shown the influence of the reliability factor in the cost function showing it to be a key parameter of decision and the importance of the wind turbine hub height in the optimization.