Optimal Design of Hybrid Renewable Energy

System for Electrification of a Remote Village in

Egypt
Ahmed Helal, Rasha El-Mohr, and Hussien Eldosouki
Electrical and Control Engineering Dept., Arab Academy for Sciences & Technology and Maritime Transport
Alexandria, Egypt
ahmed.helal@staff.aast.edu
rasha.elmohr@aast.edu
hdesouki@aast.edu

Abstract— Stand-alone hybrid renewable energy systems are
used to supply the electricity demand for remote areas. Design
of a hybrid renewable energy system is a site specific and it
depends upon the renewable resources available and load
demand profile. This paper describes design, simulation and
feasibility study of a PV-wind-battery and diesel hybrid system
for electrification of a remote village in EGYPT. Hybrid
Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) is used
for simulation of the proposed system and for components sizing
optimization. In the optimization process, HOMER simulates
every system configuration in the search space and the system
with the least total Net Present Cost (NPC) is chosen as the
optimum system.
Keywords- Hybrid; Electrification; Renewable energ; PV;
Wind Turbine
I. INTRODUCTION
Remote communities may not be able to connect to an
electrical power grid due to physical and/or economical
constraints. The conventional solution to supply the electricity
demand of such areas is the use of diesel generators. The
operation and maintenance costs associated with these diesel
generators are very high due to the escalating fossil fuel prices
together with difficulties in fuel delivery. Considerable fuel
saving, and hence cost saving can be achieved by the
integration of the available renewable energy resources such
as wind and/or solar with the existing diesel generators [1].
Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES) is composed
of one renewable and one conventional energy source or more
than one renewable with or without conventional energy
sources. HRES works in stand alone or grid connected mode.
It is becoming common topology for stand-alone
electrification system in remote areas due to the advances in
renewable energy technologies and power electronic
converters which are used to convert the unregulated power
generated from renewable sources into useful power to the
load. The important feature of HRES is to combine two or
more renewable power generation technologies to make the
best use of their operating characteristics and to obtain
efficiencies higher than that could be obtained from a single
power source. This feature results from the ability of HRES to
take the advantage of the complementary diurnal (night/day)
and seasonal characteristics of the available renewable energy
resources at a given site [2].
978-1-4673-4695-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
The proper sizing of every single component in the HRES
is a key factor for its techno-economical feasibility. Therefore,
the maximum benefit from using HRES depends mainly on
the sizing methodologies used for designing this kind of
hybrid energy systems in an optimal way. These optimization
problems refer to the choice of the best set of system’s
components from a search space or set of possible solutions
(i.e. set of possible components and their size in the hybrid
energy system); this involves selecting one or more
optimization problem, choosing an objective function and
identifying a set of constraints. The objective function and the
constraints must all be functions of one or more optimization
variables. Additionally, the problem increases its complexity
due to non-linear characteristic response in system’s
components, stochastic availability in some renewable sources
(e.g. solar or wind), and the number of the design constraints
and optimization variables. Because the aforementioned,
along the last years large number of optimization
methodologies applied to design process of hybrid energy
systems has been developed [3].
Numerous simulation programs were used by researchers
to design HRES in the most cost effective way. Using
computer simulation, the optimum configuration can be found
by comparing the performance and the energy production cost
of different system configurations. Among all these software,
HOMER (Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric
Renewable) is the most common used optimization software
for hybrid systems as it performs the complicated optimization
task in an easy and accurate way by economically analyzing
various possible alternatives and sorting them out for
optimality [4]. It is a public domain software produced by
National Renewable Energy Laboratory that simulates and
optimizes stand-alone and grid-connected power systems with
any combination of wind turbines, PV arrays, hydro power,
biomass power, internal combustion engine generators, micro-
turbines, fuel cells, batteries, and hydrogen storage, serving
both electric and thermal loads (by individual or district-
heating systems). Also, all costs (including any pollution
penalties) except fuel handling costs and taxes are included.
The simulation considers a one-year time-period using a
minimum time-step of 1 min. It performs a sensitivity analysis
which can help the analyst to do ‘what-if’ analyses and to
investigate the effects of uncertainty or changes in input
variables.
 The objective of the optimization simulation is to evaluate
the economic and technical feasibility for a large number of
technology options, while considering variations in
technology costs and energy resource availability [5].
Numerous publications have been completed related to the
use of HOMER software for HRES modeling: HOMER has
previously been used to assess the wind energy potential at
individual locations in Ethiopia [6], to assess the feasibility of
a stand-alone wind-diesel hybrid in Saudi Arabia [7], to assess
the feasibility of zero-energy homes [8], and simulate a stand-
alone system with hydrogen in Newfoundland, Canada [9].
Finally, HOMER has previously been used to simulate a
system where 100% of the electricity and heat demand was
met by renewable sources [10].
load demand. It is required to minimize these two types of
cost in order to achieve a sustainable economic efficiency
[12].
III. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
A HRES generally comprises more than one primary
renewable power generation components working in parallel
with a secondary non-renewable component as a backup
system. This study focuses on a photovoltaic- wind- batteries
hybrid power system. Figure 1 illustrates the proposed scheme
as implemented in the HOMER program. The additional
information for the electrical load demand, renewable energy
resources, and system components details are explained in the
following sections.

The traditional energy resources in Egypt are oil, natural

gas, and hydro power. The Egyptian oil reserves are depleting
and there are high and justifiable expectations that in the
coming few years Egypt traditionally a net exporter – will be a
net oil importer country.
Acknowledging this critical energy situation and in order
to face this challenge, the Supreme Council of Energy has
approved in 2008 a strategy to diversify the energy sources in
the electricity sector and reduce the dependency on fossil fuel
by considering a larger contribution from renewable energy
sources. Accordingly, the share of renewable energy in the
electricity generation should reach 20% by the year 2020
excluding the share of the large hydropower plants. [11]. Figure 1. Scheme of the HRES representation in HOMER program

The objective of this paper is to determine the best A. Electrical Load

configuration of HRES for electrification of a remote village
in a desert zone in EGYPT located at East Oweinat (30°8'N Electrical load demand is an important element of a HRES
latitude and 35°5'E longitude) referring to the best optimal and any other power generating system. Figure 2 shows the
sizing and operational strategy that can offer the lowest total daily electric load profile for the remote village under study.
Net Present Cost (NPC). HOMER randomly draws the daily perturbation factor once
per day from a normal distribution with a mean of zero and a
II. ECONOMIC MODELING standard deviation equal to the daily noise input value. In
addition, it randomly draws the hourly perturbation factor
HOMER uses total NPC to represent the life cycle cost of the
every hour from a normal distribution with a mean of zero and
system. This includes all costs and revenues that occur within
a standard deviation equal to the hourly noise input value [4].
the project lifetime, with future cash flows discounted to the
The data source is synthetic and 5% of daily noise and 5% of
present. The NPC includes the initial cost (IC) of the system
hourly noise is considered. The monthly average load
components, the cost of any component replacements that
variation for the village under study is shown in fig. 3, with an
occur within the project lifetime, the cost of maintenance and
average value 26 kWh/day and 1.515 MW peak demand.
fuel. The NPC is calculated according to the following
equation [12]:
TAC (1)
NPC
CRF
Where TAC is the total annualized cost (which is the sum
of the annualized costs of each system component). The
capital recovery factor (CRF) is given by

i1  i 
N
CRF (2)
1  i N  1
Where, N is the number of years and i is the annual real
interest rate. In sustainability analysis, smaller values of NPC
and COE mean a less payment to match the same electricity Figure 2. Average daily load profile for a year
 Figure 3. Monthly average load variation for the village under study

B. Renewable Energy Resources

1) Solar Energy Resources:

The zone under investigation, East Oweinat, is located at

30°8'N latitude and 35°5'E longitude. The typical data for
solar energy resources are present in the official NASA
surface meteorology and solar energy website [13]. Figure 4
shows the solar resource profile for this area over a one-year
period, with an annual average solar radiation equal 5.37
kWh/m2/d.

Figure 5. Average monthly wind speed data

C. System Components Details

Figure 4. Averages solar radiation and clearness index
2) Wind Energy Resources:
The hourly average wind speed (m/s) of the site is
collected from NASA website [13]. Figure 5 shows the
monthly mean wind speed variation between 4.4 m/s
minimum and 5.6 m/s maximum.
The energy system components include photovoltaic
modules, wind turbine, diesel generator, batteries, and power
converter. This study develops a suitable assembly of the key
parameters such as photovoltaic array output power
characteristics, wind turbine power curve, diesel generator
power performance, battery storage, and converter capacity to
match the predefined load demand. For economic analysis, the
cost including the initial capital, replacement cost, and
operating and maintenance cost are considered as simulating
conditions.
The optimization search space for the hybrid energy
system used in this paper is give in table I, while the cost
figures used for the components simulation in HOMER
software is listed in table II.
 TABLE I. OPTIMIZATION SEARCH SPACE FOR THE HRES In this paper, the diesel fuel price is the sensitivity variable
considered for the optimal design of the HRES.
250kW Diesel Three different configurations were studied to supply the
Battery Inverter
PV (kW) Wind turbine generator electrical load demand for the remote village in East of
(no. of units) (kWh) (kW)
(kW) Oiwenat; diesel generators only, PV and diesel generator, and
PV, wind turbine, and diesel generators. The results of the
1 0 8 1 5 simulation of the three configurations will be presented in the
following sections.
50 1 16 10 50
A. Simulation Results for Diesel Generators Only
100 2 80 50 100 Configuration
200 3 400 100 200
In this case, the performance of the system configuration
500 4 800 200 500 using only diesel generators is studied. The system, as shown
700 5 1200 500 700
in fig. 6, consists of four generators, each of 800 kW.

1000 6 1600 700 1000

1500 7 1000 1500

10 1500 2000

20 2000 2500

30 2500 3000

TABLE II. COST FIGURES USED FOR THE VARIOUS COMPONENTS OF THE
HRES

Operation Figure 6. System modeling for the diesel generators only configuration
Rated Capital Replacement &
capacity cost cost Maintenance The optimization results by HOMER are shown in fig. 7.
cost The results are based on the sensitivity factor used, fuel price.
1 kW PV 8000 6000 $100/year It can be seen from the fig. 7 that, the NPC of the system is
increasing according to the increase in the cost of diesel fuel
50 kW wind price. According to the optimization results, the optimal
80000 70000 $1200/year
turbine solution of a system which components are 800kW diesel
generator is the use of two generators simultaneously. In case
8 kW diesel of 0.3$ fuel price; the total NPC for such a system is
7000 $0.25/hA
generator 6000 27,167,266 $. Based on the results, the share of each generator
is 50% of the total load demand.
1 kWh battery 100 90 $5/year
4.8 kW
3500 3400 $40/year
inverter B. Simulation Results for PV and Diesel Generators
Configuration
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS In this configuration the hybrid energy system consists of
diesel generator with PV module as shown in fig. 8.
In the optimization process HOMER simulates every
combination system configuration in the defined search space.
Only the feasible one will be displayed at optimization result
sorted based on the Net Present Cost (NPC). The combination
of system components is arranged from most effective cost to
the least effective cost. The optimization results of hybrid
renewable energy system are obtained for every selection of
sensitivity variables. The results represent different
combination of components which are diesel generator, wind
turbine, PV array system, battery and converter.
Sensitivity variables should be taken into account in order
to obtain a rational result of hybrid renewable energy system. Figure 8. System modeling for the PV and diesel generators configuration
 Figure 7. Optimization results for the diesel generators only configuration

Figure 9. Optimization results for the PV and diesel generators configuration

The optimization results for this configuration are shown

in fig.9, with the fuel price as the sensitivity factor. According
to the optimization results, the optimal solution of the hybrid
energy system is using 5000 kW PV module and 400kW
diesel generator. In case of 0.3$ fuel price; the total NPC for
such a hybrid system is 16,260,053 $.
The distribution of the monthly average electric production
shown in fig. 10 is an indication for the percentage share of
each energy source in the total electric production. Based on
the results, the share of the PV module is 83% and the diesel
generator 17% all in case of 0.3$.

Figure 11. System modeling for the PV, wind and diesel generators
configuration

The optimization results for this configuration are shown

Figure 10. Monthly average electric production for the PV and diesel
generators configuration
C. Simulation Results for PV, Wind, and Diesel Generators
Configuration
In the third configuration the hybrid energy system used to
serve the electrical load demand consists of diesel generator,
PV modules and wind turbines as shown in fig. 11.
in fig.12. The results are based on the sensitivity factor used,
fuel price.
As shown in fig. 12, the NPC of the system is increasing
according to the increase in the cost of diesel fuel price.
According to the optimization results, the optimal solution of
the hybrid energy system is using 5000 kW PV module, two
250kW wind turbines, and 400kW diesel generator. In case of
0.3$ fuel price; the total NPC for such a hybrid system is
14,518,144 $ (The minimum NPC of all different system
configurations).
Based on the results shown in fig. 13, the share of the PV
module is 79% , wind turbine is 7%, and the diesel generator
14%, all in case of 0.3$ fuel price.
 Figure 12. Optimization results for the PV, wind and diesel generators configuration

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Figure 13. Monthly average electric production for the PV, wind and diesel
generators configuration

V. CONCLUSION
In this paper the design of hybrid renewable energy system
for electrification of remote village in EGYPT is presented.
The total NPC (Net Present Cost) is HOMER's main
economic output that proves the optimality of the designed
system topology and its components ratings. The results show
that the combination of photovoltaic modules, wind turbines,
diesel generators, battery storage, and converter brings to the
optimal configuration of hybrid renewable energy system
applicable to be used as an off grid system in remote areas
with the minimum NPC.
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