This paper investigates the optimisation of a Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES) used for powering a covid-19 vaccine cold storage facility in rural areas of South Africa. The proposed system is made up of Photovoltaic (PV) panels, a Wind Turbine (WT), a Battery Storage Bank (BSB), and an AC/DC bi-directional converter. The proposed system is compared to the baseline case of a Diesel Generator (DG)/BSB designed for the same purpose. The HOMER (Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables) software is utilised to simulate the proposed hybrid PV/WT/BS system with a view of finding the most appropriate configuration that will run at optimal cost, performance and reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis is performed to analyse the effect of varying the WT hub height on the overall performance of the proposed system. The results show that in comparison to the DG/BSB system the proposed hybrid PV/WT/BS system can significantly reduce the Cost of Energy (COE), GHG emissions, total Net Present Cost (NPC), and the system capacity shortage by as much as 76.2, 100%, 71.5%, and 100% respectively. Furthermore, the sensitivity results show that the WT hub height has a significant effect on the overall costs of the proposed system. © 2022 IEEE.
Optimisation of a RE-Based Hybrid System for Covid-19 Vaccine Cold Storage Facility