Evaluation of a stand-alone CHP-Hybrid system using a multi-criteria decision making due to the sustainable development goals

The world today revolves around energy, especially in the forms of electricity and heat. Distributed microgrids that incorporate renewable energy sources with conventional fossil fuels have especially gained strong mo-mentum for providing power to rural areas. The present paper discusses the optimization of a hybrid system composed of CHP-based diesel generators (DG), a natural gas boiler, photovoltaics (PV), wind turbines (WT), and a battery bank (BAT) under tropical weather conditions. The HOMER optimization algorithm and sensitivity analysis tool are used to analyze the effect of project variables such as component prices, renewable resources potential, power grid breakeven distance, and power consumption profile on performance. The optimum sce-nario using only economic factors and assuming cycle charging is a PV/WT/DG/BAT/Boiler system with 6 kW of WT, 7.55 kW of PV, 10 kW of DG, and 21 kWh of battery that can achieve a 0.143 $/kWh cost of energy with a renewable fraction of 37.1%. Implementation of TOPSIS method considering sustainable development goals for criteria weighting eliminates the DG, and leads to a 100% renewable configuration of PV/WT/BAT/Boiler with 18 kW of WT, 33.2 kW of PV, 119 kWh of battery, and 0.301 $/kWh cost of energy. The main contribution of this study can be seen in providing a new approach for weighting the TOPSIS multi-criteria decision-making process based on UN sustainable development goals. Furthermore, comparing the economic optimization results with multi-criteria optimization results for a stand-alone CHP unit provides a critical point of view on studies with a single-objective decision making process.