Optimized Sizing of Energy Management System for Off-Grid Hybrid Solar/Wind/Battery/Biogasifier/Diesel Microgrid System

Recent advances in electric grid technology have led to sustainable, modern, decentralized, bidirectional microgrids (MGs). The MGs can support energy storage, renewable energy sources (RESs), power electronics converters, and energy management systems. The MG system is less costly and creates less CO2 than traditional power systems, which have significant operational and fuel expenses. In this paper, the proposed hybrid MG adopts renewable energies, including solar photovoltaic (PV), wind turbines (WT), biomass gasifiers (biogasifier), batteries’ storage energies, and a backup diesel generator. The energy management system of the adopted MG resources is intended to satisfy the load demand of Basra, a city in southern Iraq, considering the city’s real climate and demand data. For optimal sizing of the proposed MG components, a meta-heuristic optimization algorithm (Hybrid Grey Wolf with Cuckoo Search Optimization (GWCSO)) is applied. The simulation results are compared with those achieved using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Genetic Algorithms (GA), Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO), Cuckoo Search Optimization (CSO), and Antlion Optimization (ALO) to evaluate the optimal sizing results with minimum costs. Since the adopted GWCSO has the lowest deviation, it is more robust than the other algorithms, and their optimal number of component units, annual cost, and Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE) are superior to the other ones. According to the optimal annual analysis, LCOE is 0.1192 and the overall system will cost about USD 2.6918 billion.