Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Optimized sizing of a standalone PV-wind-hydropower station with

pumped-storage installation hybrid energy system
Xiao Xu a, Weihao Hu a, *, Di Cao a, Qi Huang a, Cong Chen b, Zhe Chen c
a
School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
b
Public Health England / Health Data Insight Community Interest Company, Capital Park, Fulbourn, Cambridge, CB21 5XE, United Kingdom
c
Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The development and utilization of renewable energy sources can not only effectively reduce carbon
Received 23 April 2019 dioxide emissions, but also provide access to electricity to more parts of the world. A standalone hybrid
Received in revised form system based on renewable sources is a promising way to supply reliable and continuous power in
5 August 2019
remote areas to which the grid has not extended. This paper designs and investigates a photovoltaics
Accepted 19 September 2019
Available online 20 September 2019
(PV)-wind-hydropower station with pumped-storage installation (HSPSI) hybrid energy system in
Xiaojin, Sichuan, China as case of study. HSPSI can use the available flow of the river and store surplus
energy generated from wind and PV by pumping water from the lower reservoir to the upper one. From
Index Terms:
PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system
the perspective of the investors, the techno-economic index is usually used to design the PV-wind-HSPSI
Loss of power supply probability hybrid energy system which aims to find the optimal configure with maximum power supply reliability
Levelized cost of energy and minimum investment cost. The trade-off analysis between the two objectives is based on Pareto
Curtailment rate optimality theory by means of Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO). Besides, this paper
Multi-objective particle swarm optimization takes the curtailment rate (CR) of the wind and PV power into consideration due to policy requirements.
Optimized design The relationship between the two objectives under various CR are analyzed and compared. Several re-
sults can be obtained as follows: 1) Comparing with the PV-HSPSI and wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system,
the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system can reduce by 32.8% and
45.0% respectively. 2) For the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system, the LCOE can be as low as 0.091
$/kWh when 5% LPSP can be acceptable. 3) The policy of CR is unfavorable for the investors which leads
to a higher investment cost. 4) Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) performs better than genetic algo-
rithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing method (SA) with a least LCOE. 5) both MOPSO and weighted sum
approach (WSA) have a good performance to find the Pareto fronts and its hypervolume indicator (HV) is
calculated.
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction large increasing trend. Renewable Capacity Statistics 2018 reports

As society and economy have developed, the demand for living
quality in developing countries has gradually increased. This has
led to more attention to environmental pollution. Renewable en-
ergy, as clean energy, can replace fossil fuels which cause severe
pollution and are a non-renewable resource, to generate enough
electricity to meet the demand of people for daily life and social
development [1]. Nowadays, the global use of renewables shows a
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: xxiao@std.uestc.edu.cn (X. Xu), whu@uestc.edu.cn (W. Hu),
caodi@std.uestc.edu.cn (D. Cao), hwong@uestc.edu.cn (Q. Huang), cchen12@
googlemail.com (C. Chen), zch@et.aau.dk (Z. Chen).
[2]: at the end of 2017, the global renewable energy generation
capacity reached 2179 GW. Hydro took up the largest share with
1152 GW. The installed capacity of PV and wind energy was 514 GW
and 397 GW respectively. Remaining renewable energy resources
included biomass, geothermal and tidal power. Wind power has
developed rapidly in recent years and become the second largest
renewable energy source [3,4]. In some remote areas, renewable
energy sources (wind, solar and water) are relatively plentiful, and
the national grid has not extended to these areas. Building a
standalone hybrid energy system is a significant move to fulfill the
local load demand.
In recent years, researchers have conducted in-depth studies on
the planning and operation of various standalone hybrid energy

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2019.09.099
0960-1481/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431
systems with pumped hydro storage [5,6]. The optimum sizing of
the wind farm combined with pumped hydro storage (PHS) is
investigated on Lesbos Island on the Aegean Sea from investor's
perspective and system perspective, the results indicate the in-
crease of renewable energy source penetration level can lead to the
reduction on levelized cost of energy in an island system with a
high generating cost [7]. Similar studies on Wind-PHS hybrid en-
ergy system have also been analyzed for Brazil [8] and Kenya [9].
The concept of integrating PV into the PHS have also been inves-
tigated in several literatures [10,11]. In Ref. [12], the goal is to
choose the sizes of each component of a PV-pumped hydro energy
storage system and the sizing of the PV plant by means of particle
swarm optimization (PSO) to minimize the costs, the results indi-
cate the low cost of diesel oil leads to a large use of internal com-
bustion engine instead of PV arrays. The idea of optimal sizing of a
utility-scale PV installation with hydropower is analyzed and the
results show that this is a feasible method through which PV power
can be integrated into a pumped-storage system more smoothly
[13]. Besides, the research of coupling both of them into the PSH has
been considered in Refs. [14,15]. The authors conduct system sizing,
simulation and optimization and indicate that a PV-Wind-PHS
hybrid energy system is more cost-effective than a WT-PHS
hybrid energy system since PV and wind power can be comple-
mentary on a temporal scale [16], compared to their previous work
[11]. Through extensive literature review, we find that few litera-
tures consider the water level change of the upper reservoir at each
hour [17] and the efficiency change of the variable speed pump and
water turbine under different operation condition [18], which may
cause inaccurate optimized sizing of the hybrid renewable energy
system.
For the planning optimization problems, multi-objective tech-
nique is usually adopted since the planners need to take full ac-
count of many factors, such as investment cost, reliability,
environment. However, these factors usually are conflicting ob-
jectives, it is impossible to make all these objectives optimal
simultaneously. The Pareto fronts are usually employed to analyze
and discuss the relationship between these conflicting objectives
which provides a set of optimal solutions. Plenty of studies have
been conducted on the multi-objective scheduling and planning
optimization [19e23]. An improved MOPSO algorithm is proposed
in Ref. [19] to schedule hydro-thermal-wind with electric vehicles.
The two objectives of this paper are generation cost and emission
[20]. uses Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm to smooth
power output process and total amount of annual power genera-
tion in Longyangxia hydro/PV hybrid power system which is a bi-
objective optimization problem. Three objectives, which are ener-
getic, environmental and economic, are considered to design a
desalination system based on the genetic algorithm [21]. The paper
uses 3-dimensional and 2-dimensinal Pareto frontiers to investi-
gate the three objectives. The techno-economic criterion is widely
used to design the hybrid renewable energy system which is a bi-
objective optimization problem [11,24,25]. The two objectives of
the cost of electricity and the Loss of Power Supply Probability
(LPSP) are analyzed in Ref. [24] using multi-objective self-adaptive
differential evolution, the results give a set of planning solutions for
the PV/wind/diesel hybrid microgrid system. A techno-economic
optimization is conducted in Ref. [11] to investigate a standalone
PV-PHS hybrid energy system which uses Pareto front to analyze
the two objectives (LPSP and LCOE). However, these literature does
not consider the curtailment of the renewable energy at the stage of
planning.
In China, some policies have been regulated to restrict the
curtailment of renewable energy such as wind power, solar power
and hydro power [26]. The research of this paper is based on a real
project which is located in Xiaojin, Sichuan, China. In the project,
1419
the CR should be considered due to policy requirement. According
to the National Energy Administration of China, the curtailment
rate of the wind power and PV power are 12% (36.684 TWh) and 6%
(7.092 TWh) respectively at the end of 2017 [27] which is a
considerable waste. Plenty of studies have investigated the benefits
of PHS in reducing the curtailment of the wind power. The in-
vestment and operation cost is analyzed by coupling different ca-
pacities of PHS into the 10 GW wind power in Jiangsu, China [28].
The obvious results can be obtained which reveal that the curtail-
ment of wind power decreases as the capacity of PHS increases. A
similar study can be found in Irish, the authors examines the
advantage of the PHS in a power system with high wind penetra-
tion in Irish power system [29]. The results indicate that the
additional capital costs of PHS can be justified by the reduction in
the wind curtailment at a higher penetration of wind power. Due to
the policy requirements, the curtailment rate of the wind and solar
power is now an important issue in some countries, such as China.
Therefore, it is important to take the curtailment rate of renewable
energy into the techno-economic analysis. To the best of our
knowledge, this is the first paper to design a standalone hybrid
renewable energy system considering the curtailment rate. For the
planning optimization, PSO is applied more frequently instead of
GA which performs better to find the optimal solution [30,31].
Therefore, the MOPSO is used to find the Pareto front which is a
method based on PSO.
The contributions of this paper are:
(1) This work investigates the potential of PV-wind-HSPSI
hybrid energy system application with a real situation at
Xiaojin, Sichuan, China as case of study. (2) Due to the policy
requirements, the curtailment rate of the wind and solar
power is introduced to design and analyze the standalone
PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system based on the techno-
economic index. (3) The MOPSO is used to implement the
simulation analysis of bi-objective optimization and its
favorable performance is proved by comparing with
weighted sum approach using HV. (4) The water level change
of the upper reservoir at each hour is considered in the HSPSI
models, as well as the efficiency changes of the variable
speed pump and water turbine under different operation
condition are taken into consideration.
The following sections are organized as follows. Section 2 ana-
lyzes the model of each component of the PV-Wind-HSPSI hybrid
system. The objective function (techno-economic) and optimiza-
tion algorithm are discussed in section 3, the model of calculating
the curtailment rate of the wind and PV power are presented in this
section. Section 4 presents the data used in this paper and the
simulation results through single-objective analysis, bi-objective
analysis without/with considering the curtailment rate. Section 5
summarizes the full paper.
2. Models
The research investigates the potential of a PV-wind-HSPSI
hybrid energy system application in Xiaojin, Sichuan, China (lati-
tude: 30.76477
, longitude: 102.11929
) as case of study. The
studied area, as marked in Fig. 1, is located in the plateau with
relatively flat terrain and open view. This work gives a deep techno-
economic analysis on which configuration could be the best po-
tential investment choice in Xiaojin, Sichuan, China. The hybrid
energy system includes wind turbines, PV arrays, upper and lower
reservoirs, a controller, an inverter, a variable-speed pump, a water
turbine and other accessories (such as cables and pipes). Fig. 1 gives
a schematic diagram of the hybrid energy system. The energy flow
1420 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431

Fig. 1. A stand-alone PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system.

of each component in this hybrid system is shown in Fig. 1 by the Table 1

red arrows. When the power generated from PV and wind is greater PV system parameters.

than the local load, the variable-speed pump works to pump water href hloss href k
from the lower reservoir into the upper reservoir. When the power Value 0.95 0.86 0.12 0.004
generated from PV and wind is not sufficient to supply the local
load, the water turbine works and releases water to generate po-
wer. In order to better analyze the hybrid system studied in this
values of the parameters used in this article. It is notable that
paper, each component is modelled as described below.
inverter efficiency is a variable value under different operating re-
gimes [32].
2.1. PV system model

The mathematical model of a PV system can be divided into

2.1.2. Solar radiation on tilted PV surfaces
three parts: the PV array output power model, solar radiation on
Most local observatories record global and diffuse irradiation
tilted PV surfaces and PV module temperature.
data on a horizontal surface. However, the PV module will have a
tilt angle relative to the horizontal plane for better performance.
2.1.1. PV array model
Three factors, beam (direct), diffuse and ground-reflected irradi-
The power generation of PV panels is affected by solar intensity,
ances, determine the total amount of radiation exposure on the PV
temperature, tilt angle and wind speed. Especially in some windy
panel. The irradiation on tilted PV surfaces can then be accurately
locations, the effect of wind speed on cooling of PV panels is sig-
estimated:
nificant. A more accurate PV array model [32] can be used to esti-
mate the actual performance of PV modules during the planning
Gb ¼ Gb;b þ Gb;d þ Gb;r (2)
stage. Several parameters, such as solar radiation on the PV panel
surface (Gb ) in W/m2, operating temperature of the PV panel (T0 ) in
where Gb is the total radiation on the tilted PV surface (W/m2) and
o
C, inverter efficiency (hinv ) in %, and losses (hloss ) in %, determine
Gb;b , Gb;d , Gb;r are the beam (direct), diffuse, and ground-reflected
the power generation of PV modules. The power generation of PV
irradiances on the tilted PV surface in W/m2. The three constitu-
modules can be formulated as:
ent terms are described below.
h   i The first term (beam radiation) is given as:
PPV ¼ hinv , hloss , href , 1  k , T0  Tref ,APV ,Gb (1)
maxð0; cosqÞ
Gb;b ¼ Gb , (3)
where href is the PV module reference efficiency under the refer- maxð0:087; cosqz Þ
ence temperature 25
C (Tref ) in %, k is the temperature coefficient
and href is the planning area of the PV array in the hybrid system where Gb is the horizontal direct radiation (W/m2) and q and qz are
(m2). Most of the parameters in the equation can be found in the the incident and zenith angles respectively in degrees.
data manual provided by the manufacturer. Table 1 shows the Secondly, the diffuse radiation can be estimated by:
 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431 1421

    8 V < Vci
1þcos b maxð0;cosqÞ >
>
0
Gb;d ¼Gd , ð1F1 Þ, þF1 , þF2 ,sin b >
>
2 maxð0:087;cosqz Þ >
>
>
> PR Vci3
(4) < ,V 3  ,PR Vci  V < VR
PWT ¼ VR3  Vci 3
VR3  Vci3 (9)
>
>
where Gd represents horizontal diffuse radiation (W/m2) and b is >
>
>
> PR VR  V < Vco
>
>
the tilt angle. The coefficients F1 and F2 , are the degrees of cir- :
cumsolar and horizon anisotropy, representing the sky clearness 0 V > Vco
and brightness indexes, respectively.
The third term, the ground-reflected radiation, can be where V, PR , VR , Vci , and Vco are the actual wind speed (m/s) at wind
calculated: turbine hub height, the rated power of the wind turbine (kW), rated
wind speed (m/s) and cut-in and cut-out wind speeds (m/s)
 
1  cos b respectively. The power curve profile of the selected wind turbine is
Gb;d ¼ ε,ðGb þ Gd Þ, (5) shown in Fig. 2. The wind speed varies with height. The wind speed
2
at the wind turbine hub height (m) can be estimated using Eq. (8)
where ε is the albedo which is generally constant. It will be 0.2 in [36]. The power law coefficient n depends on the selected location.
this paper. For relatively flat surfaces, power law coefficient which is equal to
0.14 may be a good reference number [37].

2.3. Hydropower station with pumped-storage installation model

2.1.3. PV module temperature
Temperature is a parameter with a great influence on the power
generation of a PV module. Meteorological data only provide the
surrounding air temperature of the PV module, thus, the temper-
ature on the tilted PV surface needs to be calculated. In this paper,
the PV array will be built in a windy location. A more accurate
equation taking into account wind speed to estimate temperature
on the PV modules can be written as [33]:
 
1  cos b
Gb;d ¼ ε,ðGb þ Gd Þ,
2 surplus/deficient energy:
The HSPSI is mainly composed of a water turbine, a variable-
speed pump and upper and lower reservoirs. Natural inflow
continuously supplies water to the upper reservoir, and surplus
energy generated from the PV array and wind turbines can be
stored by converting it to gravitational potential energy of water in
the upper reservoir. When the energy generated from the PV array
(EPV in kWh) and wind turbines (Ewind in kWh) cannot meet hourly
local load demand (Eload in kWh), the HSPSI discharges to generate
adequate power. An additional variable (Eadd in kWh) expresses
(6)

where Ta is the surrounding air temperature (oC). The mounting Eadd ¼ EWT þ EPV  Eload (10)
coefficient u expresses different installation types (free standing,
The proper sizing of the HSPSI should be able to meet load de-
flat roof, sloped roof and façade integrated) with different value (1,
mand without load loss, especially in the absence of solar and wind.
1.2, 1.8 and 2.4) respectively. The PV arrays in this paper are
The water quantity in the upper reservoir is replenished by natural
installed as free standing, so u is equal to 1. Vf is the wind speed on
inflow and pumped water. Assuming that the reservoir is cuboidal,
the PV module (m/s).
the capacity of the hydropower station (m3) can be expressed as:
!n
z VM ¼ abh2 (11)
Vf ¼ Vref , PV (7)
zref

 
0:37  0:088 ln Vref
n¼  .  (8)
1  0:088 ln zref 10

where zPV is the PV installation height (m). zref and Vref are the
reference height relative to ground (m) and the wind speed at the
reference height (m/s), respectively. The parameters of the Eq. (8)
are obtained from the least squares fit curves and the detailed
explanation can be found in Ref. [34].

2.2. Wind turbine model

Several wind power generation models are presented in the

literature. It is very important to select a suitable wind power
model for the simulation of the hybrid system. The power gener-
ated from a wind turbine depends on three main factors which are
the power output curve, the wind speed data of the selected loca-
tion, and the tower height.
The power output curve is the piecewise function for estimating
the output power of a wind turbine [35]: Fig. 2. Power curve profile of the wind turbine.
1422 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431

where a and b are the length and width of the upper reservoir (m),
respectively. h2 is the height of the dam (m).
The changing water volume in the reservoir can be modelled as:
0
VA ¼ VA þ Qriver þ QT;P (12)
0
where VA is the water quantity in the upper reservoir from the
previous hour (m3). Qriver is the natural inflow into the upper
reservoir (m3/h). When QT;P (m3) is positive, it represents water
pumped from the lower reservoir. When QT;P is negative, it repre-
sents water released from the upper reservoir.
In the HSPSI hybrid energy system, the water turbine and
variable-speed pump are two key components determining the
charging/discharging capacity. An undersized water turbine and
variable-speed pump increases the probability of load loss and
causes plenty of wasted energy. Oversizing the water turbine and
variable-speed pump increases cost and decreases efficiency. The
models of the water turbine and variable-speed pump are pre-
sented below [17].
The quantity of released water can be formulated as:
 0   0 
VA V
ET ¼ min ; QT hT rg A þ h3 (13) Fig. 3. Efficiency curve of different water turbines.
3600½s ab

ET
Qdis ¼  0
 (14)
VA
hT rg ab
þ h3

where ET (kWh) is the energy generated by the water turbine at

each hour when the quantity of released water is Qdis (m3), QT is the
water turbine throughput (m3/s), h3 is the basic hydropower height
and hT is the overall efficiency of the water turbine (%). r is the
water density (1000 kg/m3). g is gravitational acceleration (m/s2).
The released water at each hour cannot exceed the water turbine
throughput and the water left in the upper reservoir. The water
level of the upper reservoir changes when water turbine or
variable-speed pump operates, thus the height needs to be updated
at each hour (Eqs. (13) and (14)).
The quantity of pumped water from the lower reservoir to the
upper reservoir can be formulated as:
 0   0 
VM  VA 1 V
EP ¼ min ; QP rg A þ h3 (15)
3600½s hP ab

hP EP Fig. 4. Efficiency curve of different variable-speed pumps.

Qpump ¼  0
 (16)
VA
rg ab
þ h3
where EP (kWh) is the energy used by the variable-speed pump at
each hour to pump water the quantity of the pumped water is
Qpump (m3), QP is the variable-speed pump throughput (m3/s), hp is
the overall efficiesncy of the variable-speed pump (%). The pumped
water cannot exceed the variable-speed pump throughput and the
remaining water quantity in the upper reservoir (Eq. (15)).
Figs. 3 and 4 give efficiency curves for different capacities of
water turbine and variable-speed pump respectively. Efficiency
curves are difficult to find in the literature, because few articles
consider variation in efficiency of water turbines and variable-
speed pumps with operating conditions. The figures are obtained
by means of curve reverse normalization [18]. Fig. 3 shows effi-
ciency curves for 3 MW, 5 MW, 7 MW and 9 MW water turbines. It
can be seen that a smaller water turbine requires a lower flow rate,
and reaches its maximum efficiency faster. The 9 MW water turbine
needs the flow rate to reach 11.2 m3/s before generating power and
a flow rate of 30 m3/s to reach maximum efficiency. There is a
decrease after the curve reaches maximum efficiency. Fig. 4 shows
the efficiency curves of 4 MW, 6 MW, 8 MW and 10 MW variable-
speed pumps. The initial power of the 4 MW and 10 MW
variable-speed pumps are 0.08 MW and 0.2 MW respectively. The
maximum efficiency of the variable-speed pump is the same and
the efficiency changes with the input power.
3. Methods
3.1. Techno-economic model
A techno-economic model as objective function is used to
optimize the component configuration including the number of the
PV panel NPV and wind turbines NWT , the capacities of the water
turbine PT (MW) and the variable-speed pump PP (MW), and the
sizing of the upper reservoir VM. Reliability and cost are the two key
 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431
evaluation indexes in the planning stage of the PV-wind-HSPSI
hybrid energy system. The best performing PV-wind-HSPSI
hybrid system is the one with the maximum reliability (technol-
ogy) and the minimum capital cost (economy).
3.1.1. Power reliability model
A reliable power supply system needs to ensure load loss occurs
as little as possible, it is best not to lose any load. In this paper, the
reliability of the hybrid system is assessed based on the loss of
power supply probability (LPSP), which is defined as the probability
that the total power supply cannot satisfy the local load during one
year. Obviously, when the LPSP is equal to zero, the hybrid system
has maximum power reliability. The LPSP is widely applied in
literature to evaluate whether a power supply system can meet the
load demand. The LPSP can be formulated as [38]:
P
8760
½Eload ðtÞ  ðEWT ðtÞ þ EPV ðtÞ þ ET ðtÞÞ
t¼1
LPSP ¼
P
8760
Eload ðtÞ
t¼1
where Eload ðtÞ, EWT ðtÞ, EPV ðtÞ and ET ðtÞ are the load demand, wind
output, PV output and water turbine output at hour t respectively.
3.1.2. Economic model
Economy is the other evaluation index. In this paper, the lev-
elized cost of energy (LCOE) in $/kWh is used to evaluate the eco-
nomic performance of the hybrid system. Many configurations can
be obtained under the same LPSP if only LPSP is considered as a
single objective in system planning. The LCOE can thus be adopted
as a criterion to select the most cost-effective component config-
uration. The LCOE is calculated by the total annualized cost of the
hybrid system CTAC ($) (annualized initial capital costs, annual
operating and maintenance costs) and the total power load served
Eserved (kWh) during its lifetime. The LCOE can then be written as
[39]:
CTAC
LCOE ¼
Eserved
In this paper, the total annualized cost CTAC includes annualized
initial capital costs and annual operating and maintenance costs of
the wind turbine, PV array, HSPSI, variable-speed pump and water
turbine.
The net present cost (NPC) is the present value of the installation
and operation of the hybrid system in its project lifecycle, defined
as the lifecycle costs. The total NPC can be calculated as follows:
CTAC
CNPC ¼
CRFði; yÞ
where y is the project lifetime (years) and i is the annual real in-
terest rate (5%). CRF means the capital recovery factor, which is used
to calculate the present value of an annuity. The capital recovery
factor can be formulated as:
i,ð1 þ iÞy
CRFði; yÞ ¼
ð1 þ iÞy  1
For an off-grid hybrid renewable energy system, the revenue is
the salvage value which can be explained as the value remaining of
each component in the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system at the
end of the project lifetime. It can be calculated using the following
equation:
1423
R
S ¼ CRC , RL (21)
RCL
where CRC is replacement cost of each component ($), RRL the
remaining life of each component at the end of the project lifetime
(years), RCL is the component lifetime (years).
3.2. Curtailment rate of the wind and PV power
For the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system in the project, the
curtailment rate of the wind and PV power is restricted by related
policies. The purpose of reducing the curtailment of the renewable
energy is to maximize the utilization of the renewable energy
However, the investment cost may increase significantly with the
decrease of the curtailment rate. Therefore, in this paper, the
curtailment rate of the wind and PV power is introduced to design
the hybrid energy system. The influence of different CR on the
techno-economic index is analyzed and compared in the following
(17) simulation analysis. The curtailment rate of the wind and PV power
can be formulated as follows:
EWT;total þ EPV;total  Eprovided
CR ¼ ,100% (22)
EWT;total þ EPV;total
where EWT;total and EPV;total are the total energy generated from
wind turbines and PV array for a year respectively. Eprovided is the
energy provided by the wind turbines and PV array to the load for a
year.
3.3. MOPSO algorithm
Currently, lots of evolutionary algorithms, with a preferable
performance to obtain the optimal solution for a nonlinear opti-
mization problem, have been adopted to replace mathematical al-
gorithms in the literature. Among these, genetic algorithm (GA) and
particle swarm optimization (PSO) are widely used. Due to the
excellent performance of PSO in computational efficiency, it is
chosen to conduct the simulations in the research. Particle swarm
optimization (PSO) is a new evolutionary algorithm developed by J.
(18)
Kennedy and R. C. Eberhart et al. in recent years [40]. PSO imitates
the foraging behavior of birds in the natural world. When a bird
finds food nearby (a particle finds a possible solution to the prob-
lem), the information will be shared with other birds in the flock.
Other birds will move in the direction of food by constantly
adjusting their velocity and position. Velocity and position adjust-
ment formulas for each bird are equations (23) and (24) (the key
formulas of the PSO) [41,42]. At the beginning, the particles (birds)
are randomly scattered within a certain range; they then gradually
converge to a point. In order to address the techno-economic bi-
(19) objective, the MOPSO is used to find the Pareto front [43,44].
h i
vi ðt þ 1Þ ¼ w,vi ðtÞ þ c1 ,r1 , pbest
i ðtÞ  x i ðtÞ
h i
best
þ c2 ,r2 , gi ðtÞ  xi ðtÞ (23)
xi ðt þ 1Þ ¼ xi ðtÞ þ Dt,vi ðt þ 1Þ (24)
(20) Fig. 5 illustrates the hybrid system optimization process using
MOPSO. The MOPSO algorithm consists of two parts: the main
function and the fitness function. In the MOPSO main function, the
integer variable (wind turbine number) will execute integer pro-
cessing after the position and velocity of the particles are updated
according to Eq. (23) and Eq. (24). First, the fitness function LPSP is
calculated to evaluate whether the target is met. The particles
1424 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431
Fig. 5. Hybrid system optimization flowchart.
(position and velocity) are updated again if the target is not met.
The fitness function LCOE is calculated when the target is met. The
above steps are then repeated until all iterations are complete.
Finally, the optimal system configuration observed is reported.
3.4. Hypervolume indicator
Hypervolume indicator (HV) is also named as S-Metric which is
a common indicator for evaluating the quality of Pareto front ap-
proximations (S). In this paper, HV is employed to give a quanti-
tative description of the Pareto set. Under the same reference point,
it can be used to compare the performance of different Pareto fronts
obtained by the various methods. The hypervolume indicator is
defined as:
HVðS; pÞ ¼ Lm ð ∪ ½z; pÞ (25)
z2S
where p (p2Rm ) is a reference point such that for all z2 S;z3 p. Lm
is the m-dimensional Lebesgue measure.
3.5. Assumptions
To build the program and fit it to the actual situation, several
assumptions are made as follows:
a. It is assumed that the rated power of an individual wind turbine
is 250 kW as this is easier to transport and install compared with
wind turbines of higher rated power, especially in the plateau.
b. For simplifying the calculation at the planning stage, the varia-
tions of some factors that may have little impact on PV output
are neglected. Such as the variations of humidity, atmospheric
pressure.
4. Data and results
4.1. Data
Each component needs to be designed in PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid
system, the specification of a PV panel and an individual wind tur-
bine are 200 W/unit and 250 kW/unit, respectively. Table 2 presents
the initial capital cost, annual operating and maintenance cost,
replacement cost and lifetime of each component (water turbine,
variable-speed pump and upper reservoir [16], wind turbine [36], PV
array [46]). Due to the lack of data on operating and maintenance
cost, it is assumed that the operating and maintenance cost is equal
to 1% initial capital cost except for wind turbines.
In this paper, the data is obtained from a meteorological data
observatory near Chengdu, China (latitude: 30.76477
, longitude:
102.11929
), including hourly wind speed, hourly temperature,
hourly solar radiation, and hourly natural inflow over a year. The
data of the load demand is obtained from State Grid Corporation of
China.Fig. 6 is the hourly load demand in Xiaojin, Sichuan, China for
a year. As shown in Fig. 7, the irradiation monthly sum, average
temperature, average wind speed and average flow rate for each
month are given. It can be observed that the change of temperature
is most obvious in a year while the flow rate changes least.
The aim of this research is to design a PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid
energy system to supply continuous and reliable power to a remote
area. Single-objective and bi-objective optimization are analyzed
separately for a better explanation. Besides, the analysis for the bi-
objective optimization considering curtailment rate of wind and PV
power is carried out.
 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431 1425

Table 2
The costs and lifetime aspect for the hybrid system components.

Initial capital cost Operating and maintenance cost Replacement cost Lifetime (year)

PV array (200 W) 400 $/unit 4 $/unit 340 $/unit 15

Wind turbine (250 kW) 375,000 $/unit 7500 $/unit 265,500 $/unit 20
Upper reservoir 170 $/m2 1.7 $/m3 - 35
Variable-speed pump 1075 $/kW 10.75 $/MW 1075 $/kW 10
Water turbine 1000 $/kW 10 $/MW 1000 $/kW 10

The program is running ten times to increase the possibility of

obtaining the global optimal solution and reduce result error. The
fitness value of ten times trails is shown in Fig. 8. It can be noted
that the LCOE of each trial is close to 0.23 $/kWh. The lowest LCOE is
0.2345 $/kWh which appears four times, so this result can be
considered to be relatively accurate.
In the process of single-objective optimization, the value of the
objective LPSP is set to zero, meaning that local load must be
satisfied at any time during the year. Therefore, LCOE is the only
objective in the optimization. Fig. 9 depicts the variation of LCOE
during the optimization process over 200 iterations. It can be seen
that the rate of convergence is very fast and the curve remains flat
after 60 iterations. This value is the best result, which is the lowest
LCOE (0.2345 $/kWh).
The optimal size of each component is given in Table 3, which is
the best solution selected from ten simulations. It can be observed
Fig. 6. Hourly local load demand in a year.
that the capacity of water turbine is higher than that of the
variable-speed pump since HSPSI can provide adequate power
using the water turbine to cover insufficient PV and wind power
4.2. Single-objective optimization
supply. Undersized and oversized configurations of each compo-
nent in the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid system are also analyzed and
For the evolutionary algorithm, the simulation results are
shown in Table 3. In the first case, the LCOE (0.1970 $/kWh) is lower
greatly influenced by the parameter setting. Therefore, the MOPSO
than in case II but undersized configurations cause 1.8% LPSP and do
used in this paper cannot ensure that all the results are the same.

Fig. 7. The monthly meteorological data distribution.

1426 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431
Fig. 8. The fitness value of ten times trials.
Fig. 9. Variation of LCOE during MOPSO optimization.
not fulfill load demand completely (zero LPSP cannot be obtained).
In the third case, no load loss occurs as in case II, but the LCOE
(0.2617 $/kWh) is greater than in case II (0.2345 $/kWh), which is
not cost-effective for the PV-wind-HSPSI owner. In addition, the
variable-speed pump and water turbine with higher rated power
work less efficiently than small ones during low power operation,
and cause more energy loss. Through the above analysis, it can be
seen that selecting each component with proper capacity in PV-
Table 3
Analysis of different system configuration (undersized, optimized and oversized).
Case Wind turbine number PV panel number Upper reservoir (m3) Variable-speed pump (kW) Water turbine (kW) LPSP (%) LCOE ($/kWh)
I Undersized configurations 15 60000
II Optimized configurations 18 68930
III Oversized configurations 20 70000
wind-HSPSI is very important. The optimal configuration can not
only guarantee the reliability of power supply to local load, but also
reduce initial capital cost.
Table 4 shows three cases of simulation results for comparison.
Case I is the optimized configuration, while case II is the case where
no wind turbine is allowed (PV-HSPSI configuration) and case III is
the case where no PV array is allowed (wind-HSPSI configuration).
For case II, the sizing of each component in the PV- HSPSI hybrid
energy system is larger than that in case I which leads to a higher
LCOE (0.3493 $/kWh). Notably, the capacity of the variable-speed
pump in case II is twice as large as that in case I, since the HSPSI
needs to store more energy when there is enough solar radiation in
the daytime and then release it when the solar radiation is inade-
quate especially at night. For case III, the LCOE is the biggest among
the three cases which is close to twice that of the case I. By
comparing the three cases, it can be concluded that the PV-wind-
HSPSI hybrid energy system is the most cost-effective choice for
the investors.
Fig. 10 illustrates the cost distribution for the optimal design.
The upper reservoir accounts for 39% of the total cost, as well as the
cost of PV panels. HSPSI is very important in a PV-wind-HSPSI
hybrid system, as it cuts peaks and fills troughs. In the absence of
solar radiation and wind at night, HSPSI releases water from the
upper reservoir to generate power to ensure load demand. When
solar radiation is strong enough or wind speed is high enough
during the day, surplus energy will be produced and then be stored
by pumping water from the lower reservoir to the upper one. In this
paper, HSPSI with natural inflow can reduce construction sizing of
each component, and thus reducing the initial capital cost of the
hybrid system. Water in the upper reservoir is replenished by the
variable-speed pump and natural inflow.
4.3. Bi-objective optimization
In this paper, LPSP and LCOE are the two indexes during bi-
objective optimization. These two objectives exist in a game rela-
tionship, i.e. LPSP and LCOE cannot simultaneously be in an optimal
situation. The concept of Pareto optimality is applied to analyze the
techno-economic objective with MOPSO optimization. The set of
Pareto solutions is called Pareto Front [47] All solutions in Pareto
front are not dominated by solutions outside Pareto front (and
other solutions within Pareto front curve). Therefore, compared
with other solutions, these non-dominant solutions have the least
target conflict which can provide a better choice space for decision
makers [48]. In order to prove the performance of the Pareto front
obtained by MOPSO, the weighted sum approach (WSA) is intro-
duced to generate another Pareto front to compare with the
MOPSO. In addition, the hypervolume indicator is used to calculate
the area of the space in the objective space dominated by the Pareto
front which can give a quantitative description of the two Pareto
fonts. The two Pareto front is described in Fig. 11, the blue and red
one are obtained by MOPSO and WSA respectively. There are
infinite optimal solutions on the Pareto fronts and all the optimal
solutions should be equally regarded as an optimal component
configuration in the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid system. The ultimate
role of decision-makers is to make the trade-off between LPSP and
200000 1000 5000 1.8 0.1970
246853 1726.6 5376.7 0 0.2345
300000 2000 6000 0 0.2617
 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431
Table 4
Comparison of different restrictions including available components and areas.
Case Wind turbine number PV panel number Upper reservoir (m3)
I 18 68930 246853
II 0 105532 445351
III 82 0 794810
Fig. 10. Cost distributions for the optimal configuration.
Fig. 11. Pareto fronts in the bi-objective optimization.
LCOE (higher power supply reliability will lead to a higher initial
capital cost).
During techno-economic optimization, single-objective can be
considered as a special case (minimizing LCOE with zero LPSP),
namely the left-most point on the curve. The Pareto fronts in Fig. 11
shows the variation in LCOE of LPSP changing from 0% to 5% on
LCOE. To calculate the hypervolume indicators, the reference point
of the two Pareto front which is chosen the same as (LPSP ¼ 6%,
LCOE ¼ 0.25 $/kWh) and the number of the points on the two
Pareto front are the same. The hypervolume indicators of the two
Pareto fronts obtained by MOPSO and WSA are calculated which are
0.6584 and 0.6517 respectively. It can be observed that the HV of
the two Pareto front are very close. Therefore, it can be concluded
that both the MOPSO and WSA have a good performance to find the
Pareto front. In this paper, the MOPSO is selected and the following
1427
Variable-speed pump (kW) Water turbine (kW) LPSP (%) LCOE ($/kWh)
1726.6 5376.7 0 0.2345
3681.3 5478.0 0 0.3493
4810.0 6341.6 0 0.4268
Fig. 12. Hourly inflow water quantity on the sample day.
analysis is based on MOPSO. It can be observed that LCOE decreases
significantly as LPSP increases. When load loss cannot be tolerated
(zero LPSP), the optimal LCOE is 0.2345 $/kWh, and LCOE is 0.1039
$/kWh when 5% LPSP is acceptable. This is a decrease in cost by
55.7%. In some areas, if load loss will cause serious consequences,
the economic objective will be sacrificed to ensure reliability (zero
LPSP) of the power supply system.
A sample day (first day of February) that reflecting the typical
behaviors (e.g. the discharge/charge state of the HSPSI) of all
components in the wind-PV-HSPSI hybrid system is chosen for
detailed analysis. Fig. 12 presents inflow water quantity per hour on
the day. Simulation results on the day are shown in Fig. 13. It can be
observed that the water quantity in the upper reservoir dose not
reach its maximum and no load loss occurs on the day. The power
generated from the PV array and wind turbines supplies the local
load and variable-speed pump for charging. Local load demand is
covered by the PV array, wind turbines and water turbine.
As illustrated in Fig. 13, wind turbines generate power
throughout the day, however, the PV array can only generate power
in daylight from 7:00 to 19:00 and reaches its maximum at 12:00.
The curve with circle mark in Fig. 13 shows the change of water
quantity in the upper reservoir, it can be seen that water in the
reservoir rapidly declines from 0:00 to 8:00 and from 17:00 to
24:00. During this period, the power generated from the PV array
and wind turbines cannot meet load demand, and the water tur-
bine works to supply almost all load demand by releasing water
from the upper reservoir. The water quantity in the upper reservoir
increases from 9:00 to 18:00 since the PV array and wind turbines
generate more power than local load demand, and the surplus
energy is stored by pumping water from the lower reservoir to the
upper one using the variable-speed pump. The water is also
replenished by the natural inflow. From 15:00 to 17:00, water
quantity in the upper reservoir reaches its maximum so the curve is
flat.
Fig. 14 shows the amount of power provided by each component
on the day. It can be observed that HSPSI provides the most power
1428 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431
Fig. 13. Hourly simulation results on the sample day.
(discharging power). From 9:00 to 15:00, PV and wind power are
greater than load demand in charging state (pumping water), the
second figure in Fig. 14 is energy stored during this time, and it is
assumed that all of surplus energy (black) comes from PV array. At
night, no power can be stored because of low wind speed (pink)
and no solar radiation (green). In summary, 18.7% of the load de-
mand is covered by the PV array, 30.1% by wind turbines and 51.2%
by HSPSI. The result proves that the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid system
can provide a reliable and continuous power supply to local load.
Fig. 15 shows the change of water quantity in November. At hour
7376, water quantity in the reservoir goes down to zero (marked in
Fig. 15). Notably, water quantity changes in the upper reservoir
Fig. 14. Energy distributions for the sample day.
caused by generating and pumping, thus compensating for PV and
wind power generation to fulfill local load demand.
4.4. Bi-objective optimization considering curtailment rate
In a standalone hybrid renewable energy system, the only way
to reduce the curtailment rate of the renewable energy is to in-
crease the sizing of the energy storage devices on the premise of
ensuring load demand. Therefore, a larger sizing of the energy
storage devices which will cost higher will be needed if the
curtailment rated of the renewable energy is restricted by the
relevant policies. In the research, based on the techno-economic
index, the curtailment rate (CR) of the wind and solar power is
introduced to design the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system.
Besides, the HV of different Pareto front is calculated.
As described in Fig. 16, the relationship between the LCOE and
LPSP is given under different curtailment rate of wind and solar
power. It can be observed that the two objectives present Pareto
relationship under 2%, 5% and 20%. For a standalone hybrid energy
system with HSPSI, the CR cannot reach 0% since the variable-speed
pump do not work when the excess power generated from the
wind and PV is very low. Hence, the curtailment of wind and PV
power is unavoidable. Comparing the three curves in Fig. 16, the
LCOE increases significantly with the decrease of the CR which is
unfavorable to the investors. When the load demand should be
completely satisfied (LPSP ¼ 0%), the LCOE can reduce by almost
50.7% and 81.9% with the required CR increasing from 2% to 5% and
from 2% to 20% respectively. Through the above analysis, it can be
concluded that the policy maker should fully consider the interest
of the investors to formulate the relevant policies on the curtail-
ment of the renewable energy for a standalone hybrid energy
system with HSPSI. The HV of three Pareto front under 2%, 5% and
20% are 9.1200, 6.9457 and 2.0674, respectively. They are calculated
under the same referece point which is (LPSP ¼ 5%, LCOE ¼ 2
$/kWh). It can be observed that the lower the requirement of the
CR, the lower the LCOE and the greater the HV.
In order to better analyze the influence of the CR on the
designing of the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system, the simu-
lation results under different required CR are given in Table 5. The
optimized configure in the section of single-objective optimization
is regarded as the benchmark case which does not consider the CR.
The simulation results of the benchmark case and the other three
cases are under the condition of ensuring load demand completely
(LPSP ¼ 0%). For the benchmark case, although the CR is high (38%)
but the LCOE is low (0.2345 $/kWh) compared to other three case.
Fig. 15. Water quantity in the upper reservoir in January.
 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431 1429

Fig. 17. Iteration curves of the three different methods.

The interation curves of the three different methods are shown

Fig. 16. Pareto front of the techno-economic index under different curtailment rate.
By comparing the three cases, it can be observed that the LCOE
increases significantly with the decrease of the CR. To achieve the
reduction on CR, the sizing of the wind turbines and PV array
should be reduced and the capacity of the HSPSI should be
increased. The sizing of the upper reservoir in case III (CR ¼ 2%) is
more than eight times that of the case I (CR ¼ 20%), hence, the
HSPSI as the energy storage device is very important to reduce CR.
Compared to the benchmark case, the LCOE increases by 0.0820/
0.6258/1.5113 $/kWh with the CR dropping from 38% to 20%/5%/2%.
Therefore, the policy of CR is unfavorable for the investors which
leads to a higher investment cost.
4.5. Performance test of PSO compared with other methods
In this paper, MOPSO is used to find the Pareto front during the
multi-objective optimization which is a method based on PSO.
During the single-objective optimization, the optimal configura-
tions are obtained by means of PSO. In order to validate the per-
formance of the PSO used in this paper, other aritificial intelligent
methods, including the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and the Simulated
Annealing method (SA), which are widely studied in the previous
literature, are adopted to find the optimal configurations of the PV-
wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system. In the three numerical experi-
ments, the optimization objective is to minimize the LCOE under
zero LPSP and the number of the total iteration cycles is set to 200.
in Fig. 17. It can be observed that the initial points of the three
methods are the same to ensure that the three methods are carried
out under the same conditions. The convergence speed of the SA is
the fastest among the three methods, but the optimized result
(LCOE) is much higher than other two methods which is not cost-
effective for the investors. Although GA converges relatively
slowly and it converges after 96 interations, GA performs better
than SA. As seen in Fig. 17, in fact, PSO performs best among the
three methods with lowest LCOE and the relatively faster con-
vergrence speed.
The simulation results with different methods are given in
Table 6. PSO is obviously better than GA and SA since the optimized
results obtained by PSO correspond to the least LCOE, almost 0.4%
and 12.0% of the LCOE are reduced, respectively. For the GA, the
configures of the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system, such as the
size of wind turbines, PV panes, upper reservoir variable-speed
pump and water turbine, are very close to the optimal configures
obtained by the PSO. However, the configures obtained by the SA
differ greatly compared to PSO. Due to the good performance of the
PSO, the paper utilizes PSO and MOPSO (a method based on PSO) to
conduct the simulation analysis.
5. Conclusions
This paper investigates a real PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy
system for off-grid power supply in Xiaojin, Sichuan, China. Based
on the techno-economic index, the curtailment rate of the wind
and PV power is introduced to design the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid

Table 5
Simulation results under different required CR.

Wind turbine number PV array (m2) Upper reservoir (m3) Variable-speed pump (kW) Water turbine (kW) LPSP (%) LCOE ($/kWh) CR (%)

Benchmark 18 68930 246853 1726.6 5376.7 0 0.2345 38

Case I 14 42924 553803 3290.8 5334.9 0 0.3165 20
Case II 14 20046 2071179 6357.9 5260.2 0 0.8603 5
Case III 12 16294 4523667 4009.4 5151.7 0 1.7458 2

Table 6
Simulation results with different methods.

Methods Wind turbine number PV panel number Upper reservoir (m3) Variable-speed pump (kW) Water turbine (kW) LPSP (%) LCOE ($/kWh)

PSO 18 68930 246853 1726.6 5376.7 0 0.2345

GA 15 74982 232167 1930.3 5386.3 0 0.2354
SA 7 75011 299976 4969.7 5378.3 0 0.2675
1430 X. Xu et al. / Renewable Energy 147 (2020) 1418e1431
energy system. In the simulation of the single-objective optimiza-
tion (LPSP set to zero), an optimal configuration can be obtained in
a few iterations of MOPSO. Comparing undersized and oversized
configurations for the wind-PV-HSPSI hybrid system, the optimal
configuration can not only guarantee the reliability of power supply
to local load, but also reduce the initial capital cost. By optimizing
the PV-HSPSI and wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system, we find that
the PV-wind-HSPSI hybrid energy system is the most cost-effective
combination. In the bi-objectives optimization (techno-economic
criterion), Pareto optimal theory is used to analyze multiple ob-
jectives with a game relationship by means of MOPSO and WSA.
The HV indictors of the two Pareto fronts is calculated. When
permissible LPSP varies from 0% to 5%, the LCOE moves from 0.2345
$/kWh to 0.091 $/kWh. This is a reduction in LCOE of 61.2% when
the LPSP increases from 0% to 5%. This shows that if LPSP is small
and can be accepted, the initial capital costs of PV-wind-HSPSI
hybrid system will reduce significantly. In the bi-objective optimi-
zation considering curtailment rate of wind and PV power, it is
found that the lower CR will lead to a higher LCOE. Comparing to
the condition with 2% CR requirement, the LCOE can reduce by
86.6% under the condition without CR requirement. In addition, the
perfermances of the three methods, including PSO, GA and SA, are
compared and analyzed, PSO is better than GA and SA since the
optimized results obtained by PSO correspond to the least LCOE.
Notably, the algorithms and analytical methods used in this
research can also be applied to other hybrid systems.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Key Research and
Development Program of China (2018YFB0905200).
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