Economic and environmental analysis for grid-connected hybrid photovoltaic-wind power system in the arid region

In this paper, an investigation is made on large-scale operations of 95 MW per day hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) as a grid power generation consisting of solar and wind energy. A comparison is drawn between a grid-connected HRES and a standard grid operation focusing on environmental and economic impacts. Emissions and the renewable energy generation fraction (RF) of total energy consumption are calculated as the main environmental indicator. Costs including net present cost (NPC) and cost of energy (COE) are calculated for economic evaluation. To simulate the HRES, the hourly mean global solar radiation, temperature and wind speed data from Adrar (27.59°N, 0.11°W) of Algeria, are used as an example of a typical arid climate. HOMER is used for simulation. It is found that the optimum results of HRES show a 22% reduction of emissions including CO2, SO2 and NOx. The RF of the optimized system is 22%. It is also found that the reduced NPC and COE are only equal to about 99% of energy consumption from standard grid. In addition, through a set of sensitivity analysis, it is found that the wind speed has more effects on the environmental and economic performance of a HRES.