BBO-based small autonomous hybrid power system optimization incorporating wind speed and solar radiation forecasting

Rising carbon emission or carbon footprint imposes grave concern over the earth׳s climatic condition, as it results in increasing average global temperature. Renewable energy sources seem to be the favorable solution in this regard. It can reduce the overall energy consumption rate globally. However, the renewable sources are intermittent in nature with very high initial installation price. Off-grid Small Autonomous Hybrid Power Systems (SAHPS) are good alternative for generating electricity locally in remote areas, where the transmission and distribution of electrical energy generated from conventional sources are otherwise complex, difficult and costly. In optimizing SAHPS, weather data over past several years are generally the main input, which include wind speed and solar radiation. The weather resources used in this optimization process have unsystematic variations based on the atmospheric and seasonal phenomenon and it also varies from year to year. While using past data in the analysis of SAHPS performance, it was assumed that the same pattern will be followed in the next year, which in reality is very unlikely to happen. In this paper, we use BBO optimization algorithm for SAHPS optimal component sizing by minimizing the cost of energy. We have also analysed the effect of using forecast weather data instead of past data on the SAHPS performance. ANNs, which are trained with back-propagation training algorithm, are used for wind speed and solar radiation forecasting. A case study was used for demonstrating the performance of BBO optimization algorithm along with forecasting effects. The simulation results clearly showed the advantages of utilizing wind speed and solar radiation forecasting in a SAHPS optimization problem.