Flexible Design and Assessment of a Stand-Alone Hybrid Renewable Energy System: A Case Study Marrakech, Morocco

The main objective of this study is to propose an optimal 'hybrid renewable energy system' (HRES) destined to supply a group of typical houses in Marrakech-Morocco. The renewable hybrid system consists of a wind turbine, a photovoltaic field (PV), a diesel generator (DG), converters and batteries. Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Electric Renewables (HOMER) software has been used to assess the techno-economic feasibility. Four scenarios are evaluated and modeled by HOMER. A comparison of economic feasibility, renewable fraction, total emissions, and excess of electricity for all the scenarios is done. For an interest of 7%, the optimum hybrid system (PV/battery) has a levelized cost of energy (COE) of 0.236$/kWh, which is lower than the COE of the other hybrid systems (PV/DG/battery, PV/Wind/battery and PV/wind/DG/battery) which are respectively, 0.242, 0,270 and 0.274 $/kWh. The Sensitivity analysis was also investigated in the intent to present the impact of changing the interest rate, battery increase, solar radiation, and the load demand increase on the performance of the hybrid system. The sensitivity results elucidate that the PV/Battery hybrid system is still viable for all interest rates ranging from 7 to 10% compared to PV/DG/Battery and PV/Wind/DG/Battery that are also report good economic performance but still suffer from harmful emissions. The combination of PV and batteries together ensures a clean electricity production compared to the PV/DG/Battery and PV/Wind/DG/Battery. The latter present a total CO2 emission of 5200 kg/year with an increase of the COE that achieves 50% for DG/battery system. Furthermore, the hybrid system combining PV with batteries gives a high renewable fraction compared to the second optimal system.