Techno-economic and environmental assessment of low carbon hybrid renewable electric systems for urban energy planning: Tehran-Iran

Tehran is one of the most populous and polluted cities in Iran with a fossil fuel-dependent economy. This paper aims to assess a techno-economic and environmental feasibility of biomass-based power plant in off-grid mode to present optimal planning for reliable electrification to Tehran. To achieve this goal, size optimization and sensitivity analysis of the proposed hybrid renewable electric system (HRES) is performed by simulating a model in HOMER software to determine the most economical and environment-friendly HRES for the studied area. The assessment criteria for selection of optimal architecture are based on the lowest of net present cost (NPC), cost of energy (COE), and carbon emission quantity (CEQ). Accordingly, HOMER proposes the seven feasible HRES that among them, the biomass generator (BG), photovoltaic (PV) and Wind turbine (WT) hybrid system including 3,181 kW PV panels, 4300 kW WT, a 5,100 kW BG, 17,035 kWh battery storage and 4,415 kW converters is the most optimum power system. Besides, the aforesaid system has COE of 0.281 $/kWh and NPC of 113 M$. Techno-economic comparison of seven systems shows that the integration of PV and WT with biomass systems could be an effective method to make a cost-optimal and reliable HRES, especially in a large scale city- for low-carbon and climate-resilient communities.