Economic Design of a Hybrid Wind-Solar Power Plant Based on the Energy Storage System with Consideration of the Equivalent Loss Factor

A hybrid plan is one of the solutions to increase the economic efficiency of renewable power plants. Photovoltaic and wind energy are the two major sources of renewable energy that will account for a large part of energy production in the future. The energy supplied from these sources is unpredictable, and as a result, to increase the reliability and availability of the load, the capacity of these power plants and their storage system should be considered much higher than demand. In this article, a hybrid system including wind turbines, solar arrays, and fuel cells for two scenarios, summer and winter load patterns, were designed. This proposed system minimizes the 20-year costs including initial investment, operation, and maintenance, as well as the cost of load losses. The equivalent loss factor of the system should be provided along with other constraints. Therefore, the solar radiation and wind speed data related to a region of Iran (Kerman Province) were considered in addition to the load pattern. The possibility of an emergency exit of three main components of the system, wind turbines, solar arrays, and AC/DC converter, was also considered, and the Crow search algorithm and PSO algorithm were used for optimization and validation. The results showed that the optimal sizing of energy production systems based on renewable resources in addition to the improvement of production technology are the main solutions for reducing the costs of these systems.