Abstract
In this study, a standalone hybrid wind turbine (WT)/photovoltaic (PV)/biomass/pump-hydro-storage energy system was designed and optimized based on technical, economic, and environmental parameters to provide the load demand with an objective function of minimum cost of energy (COE). The constraints of the proposed approach are the loss of power supply probability, and the excess energy fraction. The proposed approach allows the combination of different sources of energy to provide the best configuration of the hybrid system. Therefore, the proposed system was optimized and compared with a WT/PV/biomass/battery storage-based hybrid energy system. This study proposes three different optimization algorithms for sizing and minimizing the COE, including the whale optimization algorithm (WOA), firefly algorithm (FF) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) and the optimization procedure was executed using MATLAB software. The outcomes of these algorithms are contrasted to select the most effective, and the one providing the minimum COE is chosen based on statistical analysis. The results indicate that the proposed hybrid WT/PV/biomass/pump-hydro storage energy system is environmentally and economically practical. Meanwhile, the outcomes demonstrated the technical feasibility of a pump-hydro energy storage system in expanding the penetration of renewable energy sources compared to other existing systems. The COE of the pumped-hydro storage hybrid system was found to be lower (0.215 $/kWh) than that with batteries storage hybrid system (0.254 $/kWh) which was determined using WOA at the same load demand.