Technical and economic analysis of different configurations of stand-alone hybrid renewable power systems - A case study

The current work presents a feasibility study of stand-alone hybrid systems. Such renewable energy systems contain photovoltaic, wind and fuel cells. This system is used for supplying electrical energy to certain load demand in remote areas. Six different configurations were investigated and evaluated, namely, photovoltaic (PV)/battery storage (BS), PV/fuel cell (FC), wind turbine generator (WTG)/BS, PV/WTG, WTG/FC and PV/FC/BS. A detailed description and expected performance of the different configurations were established to be installed at Minya Governate (Egypt), which represents a remote agricultural area. Results are compared to find out the optimal configuration. Comparisons are based on minimum total net present cost and cost of energy. HOMER software has been used to simulate and optimize system performance. Optimization results showed that PV/FC hybrid renewable system attains the best choice among all studied configurations.