Optimal configuration of a large scale on-grid renewable energy systems with different design strategies

Several oil-importing countries tend to utilize renewables as alternatives to traditional energy sources. This is to replace conventional fossil fuel plants with clean, economical, and reliable energy resources. In this paper, all possible on-grid renewable energy systems with different design scenarios are investigated to satisfy the load demand of Al-Mastaba city, Jordan. These grid-connected cases include solar photovoltaic (PV) only, wind only, hybrid PV/wind, PV/pumped hydro storage (PHS), wind/PHS, and hybrid PV/wind/PHS systems. In each scenario, the optimal sizing and energy management strategy are achieved using flow direction optimization algorithm. This is done by minimizing the grid usage factor (GUF). The decision variables include the number of PV panels, the number of wind turbines, and/or the height of upper reservoir (UR) of the PHS facility (hhydro). The input hourly measured data for systems' components were brought from formal institutions to get realistic and future real-life recommendations. Results showed that hybrid PV/wind/PHS (Scenario 6) has the best design. It has the lowest GUF of 0.59%. It comprises of 12,692 solar panels, 28 wind turbines, and 106.98m as hhydro of the UR. The uncertainty analysis on input measured data is implemented to test the system's robustness. It is noticed that the 6th scenario released an amount of CO2 of 122.29 t/year and the corresponding renewable storage factor is 63.72% with 0.042 $/kWh as the lowest value of levelized cost of energy. The methodology of this paper is highly recommended anywhere to reduce grid purchases and make it dispensable by adopting renewable retrofitting systems.