Optimal power scheduling of an off-grid renewable hybrid system used for heating and lighting in a typical residential house

Abstract

In Turkey, there is a significant increase in demand for electricity due to population and economic growth taken place in recent years. This is a major economic factor affecting electricity price on market as well as other factors such as an increase in oil and natural gas prices. To be more specific around 50% of electricity is generated by natural gas generators and 95% of natural gas is imported from other countries. However, Turkey has considerable amount of wind and solar energy potentials to generate electricity through wind turbines and photo-voltaic arrays either on-grid or off-grid. An off-grid hybrid system is more attractive in rural areas where access to grid is limited or unavailable. This study focuses on a power scheduling in a simple renewable hybrid system in order to minimize the operational unit cost using the binary-coded genetic algorithm instead of using mixed integer linear programming. The preliminary results indicated that the binary-coded genetic algorithm produced encouraging and meaningful outcomes to minimize operational unit cost in a typical renewable microgrid photo-voltaic/wind hybrid system.