Cost Effective Hybrid Renewable Energy System Integrated with Biogas for Northern Part of India Using RETscreen Software

This work represents a design of a microgrid (renewable) for a load in Prayagraj Uttar Pradesh. It consists of photovoltaic system, and battery storage. In day time solar cells provides sufficient energy to the load while during low irradiance period battery provides energy to the loads. During diurnal hours, the photovoltaic and biogas generators produce sufficient electricity to meet the load’s requirements, with excess energy directed to the electrolyser for production of hydrogen and its storage. When additional energy is required, electric fuel cells utilize hydrogen from the storage unit. For optimization smell based optimization technique is used with the help of MATLAB software. Moreover, the RETscreen Expert enables the identification of the ideal system dimensions that satisfy potential requirements, alongside the most viable economic parameters, whilst ensuring maximum system dependability. To achieve this, three scenarios were devised and evaluated: the initial model comprised a solar arrangement with conventional batteries, the second incorporated a solar setup, biomass energy and batteries, and the third consisted of Photovoltaic systems, biomass energy, and fuel cells combined with a 10 kW energy storage system. Levelised cost of energy for solar stands at 0.42 $/kWh. The simulation results plainly show that the HRES is a more cost-effective configuration as compared to single standalone renewable energy systems with batteries, which has a levelised cost of energy (LCOE) as 0.16 $/ kWh with lowest CO2 emission model.