Assessment of renewable energy systems combining techno-economic optimization with energy scenario analysis

Energy system modeling offers helpful insights for exploring the potential use of renewable energy technologies in various applications. Different software tools are extensively used to model and design the renewable energy systems having different features. The choice of software tools used is highly dependent on the specific objective of the respective study. Among the software tools used, HOMER and RETScreen are two most popular modeling software used for designing renewable energy systems. In this paper, a modeling framework utilizing HOMER and RETScreen has been proposed for assessing renewable energy systems focusing on power systems providing electricity. HOMER has been employed to obtain the optimization of energy system components, cost and electricity share for the system. The results from HOMER were subsequently used as input in RETScreen along with other appropriate inputs for detailed project analysis with energy scenario for the systems. As a case study, this framework has been utilized for assessing Solar PV-Diesel energy system and Wind-Diesel energy system in Kutubdia Island, Bangladesh. This modeling framework employing unique features of two different popular software tools, HOMER and RETScreen, can be beneficial for the researchers and policy makers to better assess renewable energy systems utilizing techno-economic optimization with energy analysis.