Multi-objective optimal design of hybrid renewable energy system under multiple scenarios

The design of hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) is crucial in terms of providing reliable power by renewable energies. So far, a number of studies have been conducted amongst which a single scenario based design is the mostly studied. However, we argue that handling multiple scenarios in the context of HRES design is more practical since operating conditions of a HRES (e.g., load demand) can be different periodically. For example, when designing HRES for a farmland, the busy season time and slack season time are two representative scenarios that correspond to substantially different load demand. Surprisingly, there is no adequate study of multi-scenario oriented multi-objective optimal HRES design. This study therefore fills in this research gap. A multi-scenario optimization based method is proposed for HRES design. Specifically, taking the PV(photovoltaic)–WT (wind turbines)–Bat(Battery)–DG (Diesel generator) as an example, a two-scenario bi-objective optimization model (minimization of system cost while maximization of system reliability) is proposed. In order to solve the model effectively, a scenario-dominance based multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (denoted as s-NSGA-II) is proposed. Lastly, a case study is shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, that is, s-NSGA-II is able to find well-balanced solutions for all scenarios, which therefore leads the s-NSGA-II to be a good alternative for dealing with the optimal design of HRES under multiple scenarios.