Techno-Economic and Environmental Analysis of a Hybrid PV-WT-PSH/BB Standalone System Supplying Various Loads

The Algerian power system is currently dominated by conventional (gas- and oil-fueled) power stations. A small portion of the electrical demand is covered by renewable energy sources. This work is intended to analyze two configurations of renewables-based hybrid (solar–wind) power stations. One configuration was equipped with batteries and the second with pumped-storage hydroelectricity as two means of overcoming: the stochastic nature of the two renewable generators and resulting mismatch between demand and supply. To perform this analysis, real hourly load data for eight different electricity consumers were obtained for the area of Mostaganem. The configuration of hybrid power stations was determined for a bi-objective optimization problem (minimization of electricity cost and maximization of reliability) based on a multi-objective grey-wolf optimizer. The results of this analysis indicate that, in the case of Algeria, renewables-based power generation is still more expensive than electricity produced from the national grid. However, using renewables reduces the overall CO2 emissions up to 9.3 times compared to the current emissions from the Algerian power system. Further analysis shows that the system performance may benefit from load aggregation.