Optimal Capacity Planning and Analysis of a Sustainable Solar/Wind Microgrid in Rural Areas

Conventional power systems are generally not efficient, economical, and environmentally friendly due to the primary energy demand met by fossil fuels. It is imperative to design efficient and sustainable systems considering hybrid renewable energy sources; however, integrating RES into the system poses design and integration challenges. This paper proposes an optimal planning and analysis approach for the hybrid solar/wind microgrid system integrated with battery energy storage to maximize the technical, cost, and environmental benefits. The system modelling and simulation are implemented using HOMER Pro optimizer with a representative case study to supply rural residential households in Pakistan. We evaluated the proposed system's performance and analyzed the penetration of renewable generation using real-time meteorological data. Moreover, multiple cases and scenarios were considered, compared, and investigated to prove the effectiveness and relevance of the proposed hybrid energy system. The simulation results and detailed comparisons show the proposed 100% renewable-based microgrid applicability and relevance to meet the load requirement at the lowest total net present cost ($226476.1) and energy costs (0.3523$/kWh), which were found to be 59.51% and 59.47% less than the diesel system.