A Comparative Study between Traditional Backup Generator Systems and Renewable Energy Based Microgrids for Power Resilience Enhancement of a Local Clinic
1
Energy Research Center, University of Kashan, Kashan 8731751167, Iran
2
Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran 14115111, Iran
3
Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, 6715 Esbjerg, Denmark
4
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Kashan, Kashan 8731753153, Iran
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Electronics 2019, 8(12), 1485; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8121485
Received: 15 November 2019 / Revised: 3 December 2019 / Accepted: 3 December 2019 / Published: 5 December 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microgrids and Resiliency)
Extreme weather events lead to electrical network failures, damages, and long-lasting blackouts. Therefore, enhancement of the resiliency of electrical systems during emergency situations is essential. By using the concept of standby redundancy, this paper proposes two different energy systems for increasing load resiliency during a random blackout. The main contribution of this paper is the techno-economic and environmental comparison of two different resilient energy systems. The first energy system utilizes a typical traditional generator (TG) as a standby component for providing electricity during the blackouts and the second energy system is a grid-connected microgrid consisting of photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage (BES) as a standby component. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to investigate the survivability of both energy systems during the blackouts. The objective function minimizes total net present cost (NPC) and cost of energy (COE) by considering the defined constraints of the system for increasing the resiliency. Simulations are performed by HOMER, and results show that for having almost the same resilience enhancement in both systems, the second system, which is a grid-connected microgrid, indicates lower NPC and COE compared to the first system. More comparison details are shown in this paper to highlight the effectiveness and weakness of each resilient energy system.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
power resilience; traditional backup generators; microgrids; techno-economic analysis; renewable energy resources
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Faraji, J.; Babaei, M.; Bayati, N.; A.Hejazi, M. A Comparative Study between Traditional Backup Generator Systems and Renewable Energy Based Microgrids for Power Resilience Enhancement of a Local Clinic. Electronics 2019, 8, 1485.
Show more citation formats
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
