Sizing of storage‐based renewable off‐grid system according to supply of electrical and thermal energies considering unscented transformation‐based stochastic optimization: A case study

Abstract

The paper presents the planning (sizing) of a hybrid islanded system containing only renewable sources including wind turbines, photovoltaics, and bio‐waste energy units for the simultaneous supply of electrical and thermal energy. The mentioned renewable sources are used to supply electrical energy. The bio‐waste unit (BEU) is equipped with combined electrical and thermal technology. It is used along with heat pumps to supply thermal energy. Electrical and thermal storage are employed to make the renewable power output as close as possible to the demand level. Electric storage can be either stationary (e.g., battery) or mobile (e.g., electric vehicles), but thermal storage is as stationary type of storage. In the following, the proposed scheme minimizes construction and maintenance costs imposed by power sources, storage devices, and power electronic converters, and expected storage degradation cost. This plan is bound to the model of operation of sources, storage devices, and power electronic converters. In this model, renewables are the main source of power to supply consumers, where storage is adopted to increase the generation level to make it as close as possible to the demand curve. The uncertain parameters are imposed by the load, renewable phenomena, and mobile storage parameters. To model these uncertainties, stochastic optimization based on unscented transformation is used. Finally, the findings of the paper demonstrate that the suggested scheme succeeds in the economic planning of the system with a simultaneous supply of electrical and thermal energy. The BEU equipped with a combined electricity and heat system along with thermal storage and a heat pump to supply thermal load besides providing electric energy can reduce the planning cost by 2.9% compared with the case with only electrical energy. Also, the mobile storage presence in the hybrid system can reduce the number of stationary storage devices, which alone results in a 7.7% decrease in the planning cost of the hybrid system.