Optimal energy management strategies to reduce diesel consumption for a hybrid off-grid system

Although climate change is a reality, many off-grid communities continue to use diesel generators for electricity supply. This document presents a strategy to reduce diesel consumption in an out-of-grid system formed by renewable sources (PV-HKT-WT-DG). Three energy dispatch strategies have been proposed to verify the impact on diesel consumption and generator operating hours. In addition, different energy storage technologies (acid lead, lithium-ion, vanadium redox flow, pump storage and supercapacitor) have been considered. The HOMER software has been used to calculate the optimal size of the systems through technical-economic indicators. The results show that it is possible to reduce diesel consumption progressively; however, the cost of energy increases. On the other hand, when using lithium-ion batteries under charge cycle control, the penetration of the diesel generator has been greatly reduced without affecting the cost of the system. Finally, sensitivity analyzes have shown that when demand increases, diesel consumption does not increase significantly by using redox vanadium flow batteries, whereas the diesel generator operating hours decrease significantly in all systems.