Mathematical modeling and economic efficiency assessment of autonomous energy systems with production and storage of secondary energy carriers

A mathematical model has been developed to describe an autonomous energy system including energy plants (technologies) of two types: energy conversion (transport) and energy (energy carriers) storage. At the conversion plants, primary and secondary energy is converted into final energy and secondary energy of another type; in energy storages, secondary energy is accumulated for its further utilization. The mathematical programming problem is formulated; the objective function is the total discounted costs of the system creation and operation. The variants of the optimal structure of an energy system, including a diesel power plant, a biomass-fueled power plant and wind turbines, were found, depending on the price of diesel fuel and wind speed. Copyright The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.