Environmental and economic valuation of user behavior in the optimal design of renewable energy systems

The utopia-tracking method, used to find compromise solutions or trade-offs in multi-objective problems, is proposed as a tool to assign economic and environmental values to user behavior. To this end, an optimal design model of an isolated energy supply system is proposed that selects, using continuous variables, different technologies to integrate a photovoltaic system. The nonlinear programming model computes the size of the system, including the storage unit. The design is approached using a base demand, which corresponds to the real data obtained from the case study, and subsequently the optimal user behavior is calculated to reduce the total annual cost of the system and the equivalent emissions, obtaining a demand coupled to the operation and optimal system design. The relevance of penalties such as the carbon tax on renewable systems is evaluated. The results indicate that the use of carbon penalties does not have a significant effect on emissions control and that, by modifying user behavior, reductions of 8 % in the system cost and just over one ton of CO \(_2 eq\) ${}_{2}eq$ per year in emissions. Finally, the calculation of compromise solutions is presented as more effective ways to reduce emissions than the use of emissions monetization.