Economic and reliable design of a hybrid PV-wind-fuel cell energy system

using differential evolutionary algorithm

Sajjad Abedi*, Hani Gharavi Ahangar**, Mostafa Nick***, Sayed Hossein Hosseinian****
* sajjad.abedi@aut.ac.ir, Tehran Power Distribution Company (TBTB)
** hani_gharavi@yahoo.com
*** mostafanick@aut.ac.ir
**** hosseinian@aut.ac.ir
Energy Research Center, Department of electrical engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic),
424 Hafez Ave., Tehran 15825-4413, Iran.

Abstract: In this paper, cost minimization of a stand-alone
hybrid energy system including photovoltaics, wind turbines and
fuel cells through the overall 20-years life time of the system is
performed considering reliability constraints. The cost function
of the system includes investment cost, operation and
maintenance cost and the cost associated with loss of load. The
applied wind speed data and solar irradiation data belongs to a
region in north west of Iran. To handle the mixed integer
nonlinear optimization problem, differential evolutionary
algorithm is applied. To provide a time efficient solution process
for the optimization problem, an approximated reliability model
is used for reliability assessment. Numerical results depict that
while the overall system cost is optimized, the reliability indices
are within a satisfactory bound with regard to the reliability
standards. Comparative results with particle swarm
optimization (PSO) present the efficacy of the proposed
algorithm.
Keywords: Hybrid energy systems, optimal sizing,
reliability analysis, differential evolutionary algorithm,
particle swarm optimization.
1. Introduction
Rapid growth of population and industrialization has led
to increase in electrical energy consumption throughout
the world. However, limitations that exist toward
expansion of electric power grid have resulted in high
load density and power quality concerns. Hence,
distributed generation (DG) has been attracted the
attention of power system designers as a reliable solution,
especially for rural and remote areas.
Renewable Energy Sources (RES) such as wind and
solar power systems have formed a significant group of
DGs. Nevertheless, such sources have their own problems
related to the intermittency and uncertainty of the power
that they produce. In some design criteria, overdesign and
oversize of the system components is performed to attain more
reliable load demand meeting. Incorporation of renewable
resources together, is another way to improve the reliability of
the system by using the advantage of one source to compensate
for the drawback of another. This issue is stated especially in
hybrid PV and wind systems.
In addition to reliability, environmental and economical
issues are of important consideration [1]. Towards these
problems, many works has been done and introduced in the
literature. In [2] the overall cost of a hybrid system throughout
the estimated lifespan of the system is minimized. The
probability of component outages during the lifespan of the
system is analyzed and various reliability models have been
evaluated. A hybrid system including wind turbines (WT) and
fuel cell (FC) is studied in [3], to examine the efficiency of
wind power. Electrolyzers and hydrogen tanks have been used
to store the excess power available from WTs when WTs
power is more than the load demand; and the stored energy is
used when a power deficit from WTs occurs. The only control
variable of the problem is the WT size; and other equipment
sizes (Electrolyzer, FC, Hydrogen storage tank) are dependent
on it [3]. The study results in that the average power delivered
to load demand by FC is exceeds one third of WT rated power
and the overall efficiency of the system is over than 60 %.
The work presented in [4] studies a hybrid system consisting
of PV panels, FC, and superconductor magnetic energy storage
(SMES). Rapid fluctuations of load demand are compensated
by SEMS. The energy needed to charge SEMS is provided by
electrical network or FC. It has been shown that this
combination leads to decrease in environmental effects and in
reactive power oscillations. However, the approach does not
contain economical design and optimal sizing of equipments.
A perfect review on earlier works on optimal design
and performance of WT-PV hybrid systems utilizing
electrical network or diesel engine as supplementary is
presented. Ways to higher reliability achievement for
consumers is also discussed [5].
In this paper, design optimization of a hybrid energy
system consisting of PV panels, WTs and fuel cells is
studied. Since one of the most important issues regarding
RES based energy systems is reliability of supplying the
load demand, a significant piece of work is dedicated to
reliability analysis of the system by embedding reliability
indices as inequality constraints into the optimization
process. Differential Evolutionary Algorithm (DEA) is
exploited to solve the nonlinear optimization problem.
Furthermore, numerical results obtained by DEA are
compared with results of implementation of Particle
Swarm Optimization (PSO). The performed reliability
analysis presents that although the size and cost of the
system is minimized, the standard expected reliability of
the system is satisfied.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows:
section 2 briefly illustrates the components of the system
under study and their corresponding models, section 3
focuses the reliability model used in the study, section 4 is
written on objective function and constraints. Section 5
contains the applied optimization algorithm, and finally,
sections 6 and 7 discuss the results and conclusion,
respectively.
2- Description of system components
A simplified diagram of a stand-alone DG system
comprising PV, WT and FC is depicted in Figure 1. The
power available from PV and WT feeds the load, and
when their power exceeds the load demand, the excess
power is directed to the electrolyzer to store the energy in
the form of hydrogen in hydrogen tanks. On the other
hand, when there is power deficit, the fuel cell turns the
hydrogen into electric power and serves the load demand.
2-1- Wind turbine
The power of WT can be modeled using the power
curve provided by the manufacturer. In some studies, as
applied in this study, the power curve is formulated in the
form of polynomials [2]:
( )
,max
,max
,max
0 ; ,
;
;
W cut in W cut out
m
W cut in
WG
rated cut in
WG cut in W rated
furl WG
WG W rated
cut out rated
rated W furl
v v v v
v v
P
v v
P v v v
P P
P v v
v v
v v v

| |
|
|

\ .

(1)
where, P
WG, max
and P
furl
are WGs output power at rated and cut
out speeds, respectively. In this study, the exponent m is equal
to 3. Also, in above equation, v
W
refers to wind speed at the
height of WGs hub.
The effect of wind turbine installation height is expressed by
Exponent Law [2], as follows:
h ref
W W
ref
h
v v
h

| |
= |
|
\ .

(2)
where is a constant between 0.14 and 0.25. In this study it
is supposed to be 0.14. The detailed model of the WT type
studied in this work can be found in [2].
2-2- Photovoltaic panel
The output power of PV panels using a set of separate
vertical and horizontal components of the solar irradiation data
is calculated based on the following conventional model [2]:
, ,
1000
PV PV rated PV conv
G
P P =
(3)
( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( )
, cos
sin
PV V PV
H PV
G t G t
G t

=
+

(4)

where, G is perpendicular radiation at arrays surface (W/m
2
),
P
PV,rated
is rated power of each PV array at G=1000 W/m
2
, and

PV
is the PV panel tilt angle. G
V
(t) and G
H
(t) are the vertical
and horizontal components of solar irradiation, and,
PV,conv
is
the efficiency of the Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT),
connected to it.
2-3- Fuel cell, electrolyzer, hydrogen storage tank and the
inverter
A simplified model to compute the output power of the fuel
cell is to multiply the efficiency of the device by the power of
the input hydrogen [2]:



Fig. 1. Diagram of the stand-alone hybrid energy system under study

FC inv tank FC FC
P P

= (5)
The energy available from the hydrogen stored in tanks is
obtained from the following equation [2]:
( )
( ) ( )
( ) 1
tank tank
el tank tank FC storage
E t E t
P t t P t t

=
+

(6)
where
t
is the simulation time step given 1 hour here.

P
tank_FC
is the transferred power from the hydrogen tank to
the FC. Storage efficiency (
storage
) may present losses
resulted from leakage or pumping, and assumed to be equal
to 95% for all working states [2].
The relation between the mass of hydrogen flow in tanks
and the energy producible from hydrogen is derived from the
following equation [2]:
( )
2
( )
storage
storage
H
E t
m t
HHV
=
(7)
The same story as for fuel cell stands true for electrolyzer
and inverter namely the calculation of power by efficiency:
el tank ren el el
P P

= (8)
( )
inv load FC inv ren inv inv
P P P

= +
(9)
where

inv
is the inverters efficiency. The efficiency is
roughly supposed to be constant for whole the inverters
working range (90%) [2].
3- Reliability
Several reliability indices are referenced and discussed in
[2]. All the indices rely on consideration of the probability of
failure in demand satisfaction during a specified time period.
The most widely used ones are Loss of load expected
(LOLE), Loss of Energy Expectation (LOEE) or Expected
Energy Not Supplied (EENS), Loss of Power Supply
Probability (LPSP), and Equivalent Loss Factor (ELF). The
reader is referred to [2] for detailed formulae of the
mentioned indices.
Whilst all the mentioned indices are evaluated in this work,
the last one namely ELF is selected as the main index of
reliability because it represents the number of outages along
with the unserved energy [6]. The maximum allowed ELF in
the standards applied in developed countries is 0.0001 [2].
However, for the autonomous system designed in that study,
ELF is restricted to 0.01 [6].
( )
( ) 1
1
N
t
Q t
ELF
N D t
=
=


(10)
where Q(t) is the amount of loss of energy and D(t) is the
load demand (kWh) in time step t.
Here, the probability of failure and forced outage for RES
components especially for PV, WT and FC is involved in the
reliability analysis unlike other equipments that are assumed
to be 100 % reliable.
An approximated model is utilized in order to calculate the
mathematical expectation of reliability indices which
considers an average output power of WT units and PV
arrays instead of considering every single outage condition
of WT units and PV arrays [2].
| | ( ) ( )
ren ren p
s S
E P P s f s

(11)
f
p
(s), in the above equation, is the probability of
encountering state s, and P
ren
(s) is the injected power to the
DC bus, generated by renewable sources. The simplified
model for the system under study is achieved as:
| |
ren WG WG WG PV PV PV
E P N P A N P A = + (12)
where, A
WG
and A
PV
are availabilities of each WG and PV
array.
4- Objective function and constraints
The aim of the optimization problem is to achieve a set of
design parameters including number and tilt angle of PV
panels, number of WTs, fuel cells and their unit capacity,
and the capacity of electrolyzer, inverter and hydrogen tank
while a minimum net present value (NPC) of the overall cost
of the system is achieved. The objective function consists of
operational costs during the 20 year lifetime of the system
and initial investments of equipments as well as costs of
ELF (NPC
loss
).
total i loss
i
MinC NPC NPC = +

(13)
The operation and maintenance costs are given by:
( )
i i i i i
NPC N CC RC K MC PWA = + + (14)
K and PWA are factors that convert replacement costs and
operational costs into the net present cost, respectively. The
definition of these factors is well presented in [7]. The NPC
for loss of load is also calculated by:
loss loss
NPC LOEE C PWA =
(15)
The optimization procedure is executed while the
following constraints are satisfied:
ELF should not exceed a defined limit [2]; the variable
representing the number of each component should be a
positive integer; the PV panel inclination angle should take
values in the range of (0,90) degree; and the probability of
failure of RES has a relation with their output power [2]:
( ) ( )
( )
,
fail fail fail
ren WG PV WG WG WG
fail
PV PV PV
P n n N n P
N n P
=
+

(16)
5-Differential Evolutionary Algorithm
Differential evolution algorithm, introduced by Storn and
Price [8], is a simple population based, stochastic
evolutionary algorithm for global optimization and is
capable of handling non-differentiable, nonlinear and multi-
modal objective functions [8]. In DEA, the population
consists of real-valued vectors with dimension D that equals
the number of design parameters. The size of the population
is adjusted by the parameter Np [8]. The initial population is
uniformly distributed in the search space. Each variable k in
an individual i in the generation G is initialized within its
boundaries x
k,min
and x
k,max
. At each generation, two
operators, namely mutation and crossover (recombination),
are applied to each individual; thus producing the new
population. Then, a selection phase takes place, where each
individual of the new population is compared to the
corresponding individual of the old population, and the best
of them is selected as a member of the population in the next
generation. In the following, the evolutionary operators are
briefly described. The first step is the mutation that can be
described as follows:
, 1 1, 2, 3,
V .( )
i G r G r G r G
X F X X
+
= + (17)
Where X
ri,G
is randomly chosen vector among the
population in the generation G; F is a constant within (0, 2);
and V
i,G+1
is the trial vector. If X
r1,G
is replaced by X
best,G
,
another form of DE called BDE will be formed. In the
second step called the crossover step, equation (17) is used
to determine the trial vector that may replace the current
vector in the next population with the probability of
crossover constant (CR) which is between 0 and 1 [8].
, , 1 ,
, , 1
, , 1
j i G j i
j i G
j i G
V if rand CR or j i
U
X otherwise
+
+
+
=

(18)
In the above equation, rand
j,i
is a random number
generated within the range 0 and 1. Finally, the selection
phase is performed and the generated vector is tested by
being compared with the best vector of prior iteration. These
steps are repeated in times of a defined number of iterations
or the algorithm is terminated if the stop circumstances are
confirmed [9].
6- Results
A case study is performed on a hybrid energy system with
the same configuration as explained in section 2. The
characteristics of components applied in system simulation
are depicted in table 1. Hourly wind speed and solar
irradiation (horizontal and vertical) data for a year pertaining
to a region (38 14' 57" N / 48 18' 5" E) in North West of
Iran is used in the simulation [2]. The load profile
considered in this work is the IEEE reliability test system
(with 50 kW at peak) [2].
The cost of loss of energy, the system expected lifespan
and the internal rate of return (IRR) are considered 5.6
($/kWh), 20 years and 6%, respectively [2].
Optimization results including the costs and reliability
indices are presented in Table 2. While the cost is
minimized, the resulted value of ELF has conformed to the
standard and is less than predetermined value (0.01) which
expresses the validity of the results. The resulting optimal
configuration of the hybrid system is shown in Table 3.
Table 4 presents the comparison between DE and PSO as
two widely used optimization methods where the result
achieved by the former outperforms the result of the latter.
Illustration of PSO algorithm is found in [9].
The amount of hydrogen stored in tanks and reliability
indices during a year are shown in Fig. 2 and 3, respectively.
As shown in Fig. 3, all reliability indices are within
permissible ranges.
7-Conclusions
In this work, cost minimization of a stand-alone hybrid
energy system comprising photovoltaics, wind turbines and
fuel cells through the overall 20-years life time of the system
was performed considering reliability constraints. System
costs such as investment cost, operation and maintenance
cost and the cost associated with loss of load were included
in the objective function. The simulation was performed for
a region in North West of Iran. The mixed-integer nonlinear
optimization problem was solved by differential
Evolutionary algorithm. To provide a time-efficient solution
process for the optimization problem, an approximated
reliability model was utilized for reliability assessment. With
regard to obtained results, the overall system cost was
optimized, while the reliability indices lied within a
satisfactory bound with regard to the reliability standards.
The proposed solution method outperforms the particle
swarm optimization (PSO) in solving the problem under
study.

Table 1
Specification of equipment used in optimization of the hybrid system [5].



Table 2
Optimization results for the case study.

OLE
(hr/yr)
LOEE
(mWh/yr)
LPSP ELF Present value of LOEE
cost for 20 year (106 $)
Investment cost
(106 $)
Present value of
Total energy cost
for 20 year
(106 $)
336 2.4 0.009 0.008 0.15 2.3 2.7

Table 3
Optimal configuration of the hybrid system

PV
( ) P
INV
(KW) P
FC
(KW)

M
TANK
(KG) P
EL
(KW) N
PV
N
WT
Equipment
Capital cost
($/unit)
Replacement cost
($/unit)
Maintenance cost
($/unit-year)
Lifetime(y
ear)
Efficiency(%) Availability(
%)
Wind turbine 19400 15000 75 20 - 96
Photovoltaic arrays 7000 6000 20 20 - 96
Electrolyzer 2000 1500 25 20 75 100
Hydrogen storage tank 1300 1200 15 20 95 100
Fuel cell 3000 2500 175 5 50 100
Inverter (DC/AC) 800 750 8 15 90 99/89
34.1 46.7 43.4 144.2 119.4 224 8

Table 4
Comparison between result achieved by DE as compared with PSO algorithm for present value of Total energy cost for 20 year.
PSO DE
2.9 2.7 Present value of Total energy cost for 20 year (10
6
$)

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
time [hour]
E
t
a
n
k

[
k
W
h
]

Fig. 2. Hydrogen Storage tank expected stored energy
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000
0
0.5
1
L
O
L
E
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000
0
10
20
30
40
L
O
E
E

[
k
W
h
]
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000
0
0.5
1
E
L
F
time [hour]

Fig. 3. Reliability indices for the simulation year.
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