Developing a discrete harmony search algorithm for size optimization of wind–photovoltaic hybrid energy system

• A Discrete Harmony Search (DHS) algorithm is developed to size hybrid systems.
• Optimum size of a wind–photovoltaic hybrid system is found by DHS.
• DHS can effectively handle discrete decision variables.
• DHS produces superior results in trivial computational time.

This paper tries to develop an efficient methodology for optimizing size of wind–photovoltaic hybrid energy systems. Since finding optimal size belongs to discrete optimization problems, optimization algorithm must be able to effectively handle this kind of problem. For this aim, a Discrete Harmony Search (DHS) algorithm is developed. The proposed methodology is easy to implement, can efficiently handle the discrete problem and can quickly find a good solution. The obtained results show that the proposed methodology finds promising results in less than one second.