Design Analysis of an Optimal Microgrid System for the Integration of Renewable Energy Sources at a University Campus

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript specifically studies the techno-economic analysis of two types of renewable resources, namely wind, solar, and their hybrids, at the IUM as the testbed. While it would be interesting to evaluate the obtained findings, below are some questions that I have:

1. Figure 10: How does the variation of temperature throughout the year affect the PV's power generation? Why is it during the summer months the PV power coverage is much lower. The given graph (Figure 10) also lacks clarity on what is being represented by the blue and green curves.
2. Table 3: Why is the peak renewable coverage is much lower (47%) for wind despite higher annual generation (2.71 GWh/y)?
3. Since there is insufficient wind as compared to the solar GHI in Madinah, why is it that the proportion of PV used for the hybrid system is small? Also, I find that the results in Table 3 (LCOE, payback period) obtained for the hybrid is rather self-explanatory, which is expected to be closer to those of wind. Hence, I don't see significance of the study on the hybrid system. 
4. Related to the question 3 above, how does the daily power generation profile throughout the year look like for wind? The idea of having a hybrid between wind and solar PV is supposed to overcome the power intermittence, hence, ideally they should complement each other. This kind of study is lacking in the manuscript.  
5. The validation and sensitivity analysis should be further improved and discussed in more details. Why is the validation only done for the PV system and not include others?
6. The conclusion is not compelling. Considering that the initial cost, LCOE and payback period of PV is much less than those of wind, again, it is self-explanatory that PV system would be favorable financially. 

Upon review, I would recommend a major revision. Besides the questions above, I find a number of misspelling and errors, for examples:

Page 6 line 5: Table X, should be Table 1

Page 6: "angel" should be "angle"

Page 7: LCOE equation should be equation 10 not 20

Page 10: it should be Figure 10, not Figure 1

Page 12 line 267: Table 5 should be Table 3

Page 12 line 289: Table 7 should be Table 4

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript can be accepted for publication after major revisions, see the followings:

*The introduction should be improved (The literature review is weak).
*English should be improved.
*The Abstract should be improved.
*The References should be updated.

*The novelty of this article is not clear. Please more explain it.
*Better description and explanation of figures 7 to 11.

*The caption of figure 10 should be changed.
*There are some typing errors and inaccuracies in the manuscript. Please, check the paper again for any possible misprints.

*The quality of figures should be improved.

*The validation section should be added.

* The conclusion should be improved.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1. The title of the research is well-matched and related to the work done. Also, appropriate key studies have been included in this research.
2. In general, the writing of the paper should be enhanced since the current manuscript and taking into consideration some spelling mistakes.
3. The manuscript needs Nomenclature.
4. The abstract section is generally good and contains the aims of work, the summary of work, and contain some quantitative analysis of the results.
5. From a scientific point of view, this paper presents like those available in the references, except for some minor changes that related to the location under study in Saudi Arabia, there are many recent references on the topic that have not been taken into consideration, The optimisation strategy and proposed methods very simple, there is not any innovation the formulation and the model are similar to the those available in the literature.
6. Authors should choose intelligent algorithms to get the optimal design and solution to the problem and should not rely only on ready-made software such as HOMER and should be compared with intelligent algorithms.
7. The references are sufficient but need to be more up-to-date.
8. The analyses, results, and conclusions in the manuscript were logical for the data used.
9. The subject of this article corresponds to that of the sustainability Journal.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Appreciate the response and efforts given by the authors in addressing the reviewer's concerns. The manuscript has been significantly revised and the additional important insights and findings have been included. Final checks on the tables and figures captions as well as grammatical spelling are required before publishing the manuscript. 

Reviewer 2 Report

This article can be accepted.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors did their best to improve the manuscript
I think it is possible to accept it now for publication after making most of the required modifications