Performance analysis and optimization of a hybrid renewable energy system for sustainable NEOM city in Saudi Arabia

This work aims to design and evaluate the performance of a Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES) for the newly proposed grand city NEOM in Saudi Arabia. The average value of wind speed and Global Horizontal Irradiance at the proposed location are 4.86 m/s and 6.43 kWh/m² per day, respectively. The various mixtures and sizes of photovoltaic (PV) arrays, wind turbines, power converters, diesel generators, and batteries are evaluated to find out the optimal system configuration to meet the required peak load of 1353 kW. The recommended HRES is optimized for the minimum net present cost (NPC). The electrical power, economic, and greenhouse gas emission analyses of the optimized HRES architecture are performed. Finally, a detailed sensitivity analysis is carried out to determine the impact of uncertainties in diesel cost and renewable resource variations on various system architectures, NPC, and CO₂ emissions. The optimal system consists of two generators 500 kW and 1 MW, one V82 wind turbine (1.65 MW), a 100 kW PV, a 200 kW converter, and 100 batteries. The NPC of the optimal HRES is US8.13 million, which is US0.6 million less than the NPC of the diesel-only system. The cost of energy of the proposed HRES is found to be 0.164 US/kWh as compared to 0.176 US/kWh from the diesel-only system. Emission analysis shows a 46.5% reduction in CO₂ emissions.