A decision support system for planning and coordination of hybrid renewable energy systems

a r t i c l e i n f o Due to the growing concern about climate change and environmental sustainability, hybrid renewable energy system (HRES), which refers to a system that combines several renewable power sources and a conventional power generator to cover the power shortage when the renewable power is insufficient, has gained more and more popularity over the decades. While the HRES is very attractive due to the minimal environmental and health impact compared to fossil fuels, the planning and coordination of HRES so as to supply stable power in a cost effective way are very challenging. This is mainly due to the unknown power demand, the highly volatile amount of renewable power supply and the complex topology of power network. In this paper, we model the planning and coordination of HRES in uncertain environments and develop an efficient heuristic to solve the model. A decision support system(DSS) integrating the proposed model and the heuristic is developed as an efficient decision tool to enable effective and efficient energy management of HRES. The visualized outputs of DSS allow decision makers to gain better understanding about the management of HRES, facilitating the decision making process. With the United Nations predicting the world population growth from 6.6 billions in 2007 to 8.2 billions by 2030, demand for energy is expected to grow in an increasing speed over that period. According to [28], renewable energy sources, such as hydropower, solar and wind energies, only account for 19% of the total world energy demand in 2013. Renewable energies are green and clean resources. They are non-depletable, non-polluting and have minimal environmental and health impacts compared to fossil fuels. It has been long recognized that excessive fossil fuel consumption can lead to significant adverse impact on the environment through superfluous carbon emissions, and in turn cause global climate change. While renewable energies are gaining more popularity over the decades, many countries are still resistant to increase the usage of the renewable energy, especially for the developing countries that are in dire need of power to sustain their economic growth. This is mainly due to the undesirable characteristics of renewable energies—their power supply is highly volatile and unpredictable; heavily relying on renewable energies is likely to result in instable power supply and could harm the economy. Many countries are thus looking for other alternatives. Hybrid renewable energy system (HRES), which refers to a …