Techno-economical analysis of stand-alone hybrid renewable power system for Ras Musherib in United Arab Emirates

The aim of this study is to model and design a hybrid renewable energy system for the remote area in Ras Musherib located in the western region of Abu Dhabi. The hybrid system, which consists of photovoltaic (PV) array, wind turbines, batteries and diesel generators, is designed to meet three known electric loads, 500 kW, 1 MW, and 5 MW to be able to fulfill the primary load for 250, 500 and 2500 households. Different combination of wind turbines, PV, batteries and generators were evaluated in order to determine the optimal combination of the hybrid system based on the lower Net Present Cost method. The proposed hybrid system is modeled, optimized and simulated using Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER). The obtained results show that the hybrid system with 15% of photovoltaic and 30% of wind turbine penetration found to be the optimal system for 500 kW average load with initial cost of $4,040,000 and total net present cost of $14,504,952 over 25 years. The reduction in CO2 emission achieved in this study for the 500 kW optimal hybrid system is 37% compared to the conventional diesel generator only power system. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.