Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

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

Techno-economic energy analysis of wind/solar hybrid system: Case

study for western coastal area of Saudi Arabia
Makbul A.M. Ramli a, c, *, Ayong Hiendro b, Yusuf A. Al-Turki a, c
a

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia
Department of Electrical Engineering, Universitas Tanjungpura, Pontianak 78124, Indonesia
c
Renewable Energy Research Group, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia
b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 20 April 2015
Received in revised form
27 December 2015
Accepted 24 January 2016
Available online 2 February 2016

The potential of hybrid wind/solar energy system in the west coast area of Saudi Arabia is analyzed in
this paper. The investigation puts emphasis on the energy production and cost of energy from both wind
turbine and photovoltaic (PV) in the hybrid system. Unmet electric load and excess electricity are taken
into consideration. The annual average solar irradiation and wind speed considered in this study are
5.95 kWh/m2/day and 3.53 m/s, respectively. MATLAB and HOMER software are used to perform the
technical and economic analyses of the hybrid system. As indicated from the simulation results, the PV
array shares more electricity production than the wind turbine generator if both wind turbine and PV
array are utilized in the wind/solar hybrid system with the same sizes. The wind levelized cost of energy
is $0.149/kWh, which is more expensive than the solar energy of $0.0637/kWh. The energy cost of the
hybrid system is dominated by battery and wind turbine expenses.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Techno-economic analysis
Hybrid wind/solar system
Excess electricity
Energy cost

1. Introduction
The world is still injecting a considerable amount of investment
in renewable energy resources. This trend has been driven by the
continuous changes in the climate resulting in global warming. In
recent years, many efforts have been made to increase the implementation of renewable sources of energy through researches and
application, not only in the developed countries but also in the
developing countries [1]. The increased exploitation is aimed at
reducing carbon emission from energy generation and improving
the reliability/security of energy supply [2].
Increase in fossil fuel consumption for electric power generation
has forced the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to pay more attention on
renewable energy generation. The kingdom now recognizes that
reducing dependency on fossil fuel for domestic consumption will
give positive impact on national economic growth and environmental issues. Generating some electricity from renewable resources instead of using fossil fuel will increase the revenue for the
kingdom from petroleum. Moreover, it is predicted that CO2
emission from fossil power generation system will increase for

* Corresponding author. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,

King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia.
E-mail address: mramli@kau.edu.sa (M.A.M. Ramli).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2016.01.071
0960-1481/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

about 20% of the current global energy-related CO2 emissions in

2030 [3]. This level of predicted CO2 emission will be reduced if
renewable energy resources are implemented for the power generation. However, the renewable energy cost is more expensive
than the electricity cost from conventional energy in Saudi Arabia
as reported in Ref. [4]. The gradual decrease in energy cost since
several years ago and the need for environmental sustainability
have led to the economic viability of renewable energy resources
like solar and wind. The cost of renewable energy is proved to be
less than that of conventional energy generation in Saudi Arabia if
the indirect costs of fossil fuel are included, such as environmental
and health costs [5]. Therefore, Saudi Arabia is also looking towards
the development of renewable energy in the coming time [6].
Optimal management of renewable energy resources is a key necessity to ensure that maximum amount of energy is extracted
from these resources. Several efforts have been done to optimize
size of grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) energy system [7,8].
Saudi Arabia has some potential locations for renewable power
generations. Solar and wind energy are the most important
renewable energy source in Saudi Arabia [9]. Solar energy appears
to be a promising candidate for electricity generation, while wind
energy takes second place of renewable energy source in Saudi
Arabia [4]. This is due to the viable wind speed potential of about
5.7 m/s [10,11] and the high solar radiation of around 2200 kWh/m2

M.A.M. Ramli et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

[12,13]. Saudi Arabia, especially on coastal areas, has relatively large

wind and solar energy which can be harvested.
Wind and solar energy are intermittent resources and are
dependent on geographical and weather conditions. Standalone
wind or solar energy systems will not generate accessible energy
for noticeable time portion of the year [14] and they seem to be
uneconomically. Hybridization of wind/solar energy systems for
electricity are usually more reliable and less expensive compared to
standalone wind or solar energy systems, as reported in Refs.
[15e18].
In order to simplify the analysis of wind and solar hybrid systems, geographic and weather conditions can be omitted, as reported in Refs. [19]. However, for obtaining accurate results, the
environmental site conditions have to be taken into consideration.
The environmental factors are very specic and dependent on locations. Renewable energy such as wind and solar also vary with
time of the day, season and type of terrain, all of which have impact
on electric energy production and cost of energy [20,21].
Numerous researches have been conducted by researchers on
the technical and economic analysis of renewable energy systems.
Garcia et al. carried out an analysis of hybrid energy system with
variable renewable generation and under exible operation. The
dynamical properties and limitations were identied and solutions
for managing and mitigating high variability of renewable energy
have been recommended [22]. In addition, an analysis of technical
and economic feasibility of stand-alone hybrid system was conducted at a location in United Arab Emirates where a 500 kW
optimal hybrid renewable energy system for the remote area was
modeled and analyzed with 37% reduction in CO2 emission as
compared to the conventional diesel generator [23]. The authors in
Ref. [24] evaluated a PV module performance by back surface water
cooling under hot climate. Their model predicts various electrical
and thermal parameters affecting the performance of the PV system. Murphy et al. analyzed the cost of reliable electricity by
analyzing hybrid distributed generation systems, diesel and gridconnected solar in view of an unreliable electric grid in Uganda
[25]. It was noted that the improved reliability increases cost, but
the increase can be justied for users needing more reliability.
In this work, the techno-economic feasibility study of wind/
solar hybrid system is analyzed for Yanbu, Saudi Arabia (Latitude:
24
050 2000 N, Longitude: 38
030 4900 E). Yanbu is located on the Red
Sea coast area and has great wind potential [26,27] and good level
of solar irradiation. Technical and economic analyses are performed
for a wind/solar system with battery storages. MATLAB and HOMER
[28] are used as tools that facilitate optimum design of the wind/
solar hybrid systems. The analyses of the hybrid power system are
performed by simulating system operation for the project lifetime.
This simulation requires data on capital expenses, operation and
maintenance, as well as replacement costs. For the simulation of
the wind/solar hybrid system, the key variables to be examined are
wind turbine, PV array, and battery sizes in order to determine
which hybrid energy system conguration is optimal based on
energy production, cost, unmet electric load, and excess electricity.
The unmet electric load is dened as the electrical load that goes
unserved because the electrical demand exceeds the supply and
deciency occurs. The excess electricity is the surplus electrical
energy produced and must be dumped because it cannot be used to
serve electrical load or to charge batteries (batteries are unable to
absorb it all).
Moreover, the investigation places emphasis on energy production, served/unserved electricity demand, cost of energy (COE),
and cost of wind/solar systems with battery storages. The best size
of the combination of PV array and wind turbine for the wind/solar
hybrid system is also investigated. The inuence of battery storage
size on the hybrid system is taken into consideration.

375

Geographical location of Yanbu is shown in Fig. 1. Weather data

used in this work are real data for the location under study. For
accurate results, environmental site conditions such as wind shear,
site altitude, hub height, ambient temperature, and ground reectance are included in the computation.

2. Wind and solar resources

2.1. Wind speed, direction, and power
A wind rose diagram provides details of typical wind speed
distribution and direction at a specic location. It is commonly
illustrated in a circular format and shows the wind blows frequency
from particular directions. The spread of wind directions is
important to give information on how to choose a wind turbine.
The wind turbine with horizontal axis needs to face towards the
wind to get the highest efciency power generation.
Fig. 2 presents a wind rose diagram for Yanbu, based on one year
of hourly wind speed data. The spoke length around the circle
shows the frequency of time of wind blow for a particular direction.
Every concentric circle indicates wind blow in a different frequency,
which is zero at the center and larger frequency at the outer circle.
This diagram shows that the wind at Yanbu is most often out from
the west. There are 3 spokes around the west direction comprising
47.5% of all hourly wind directions. It shows a rare event for the
wind to blow from the north or the southeast. The longest spoke or
the winds from the west shows that in Yanbu the wind blows from
the west at speeds above 5 m/s for about 10% of the time in a year.
The hourly wind speed data at Yanbu is shown in Fig. 3. The data
is obtained by measuring wind speed at 10 m anemometer height.
The wind speed varies between 0 and 12 m/s and rarely exceeding
12 m/s (0.79%). The annual average wind speed in Yanbu is about
3.53 m/s. The wind speeds of less than or equals 3.0 m/s are about
27.2% of the year. This means that the energy can be exploited for
72.8% of the year with 3.0 m/s cut-in-speed.
The vertical extrapolation of wind speeds at the wind turbine
hub height can be done using two wind prole laws: the logarithmic law is dened as

u2 u1


ln Z2=Z
0



ln Z1=Z

(1)

where the wind speed at hub height u2 (m/s), the wind speed at
anemometer height u1 (m/s), the hub height z2 (m), the anemometer height z1(m) and the surface roughness z0 (m), and the power
law is dened as

u2 u1

Z2
Z1

a
(2)

where a is the wind shear exponent. The IEC standards [29,30]

recommend a wind shear exponent value of 0.20 for onshore
(normal) wind conditions and 0.11 for onshore (extreme) wind
conditions.
Once the hub height wind speed has been specied, the wind
turbine power output can be taken from the power curve, which is
developed at wind speed under temperature and pressure standard
conditions of (STP) as used in Ref. [31]. The expected power output
is multiplied by the air density ratio to adjust to the actual power
output of wind turbine, as follows:

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M.A.M. Ramli et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

Fig. 1. Geographical location of Yanbu.

2.2. Solar irradiation, temperature and power

The power output of the PV array is expressed as

PPV PPV;STC fPV ftemp

IT

IT;STC

(4)

where PPV,STC is the rated capacity of the PV array under standard

test conditions (STC), fPV is the PV derating factor (%), ftemp is temperature derating factor (dimensionless), IT,STC is the incident radiation at standard test conditions (1 kW/m2), and IT is the solar
radiation incident on a tilted surfaced of PV array (kW/m2), which is
dened as:

!
r








Id
Ib
1 cos b
Ib 3 b
1
sin
I R Id 1 
IT 1
2
2
Io b b
Io
I



1  cos b
I
rg
2
(5)
Fig. 2. Wind rose of Yanbu.

PW


r
P
r0 W;STP

(3)

where PW is the actual wind turbine power output (kW), PW,STP is

the wind turbine power output at STP (kW), r is the actual air
density (kg/m3), and r0 is the air density at STP (1.225 kg/m3).

where I is the global horizontal radiation (kW/m2), Io is the extraterrestrial horizontal radiation (kW/m2), Ib is the direct beam radiation on a horizontal surface (kW/m2), Id is the diffuse radiation
on a horizontal surface (kW/m2), rg is the ground reectance or
albedo (%), b is the tilt angle of the surface (degree), and Rb is the
ratio of beam radiation on the tilted surface to beam radiation on
the horizontal surface (dimensionless) as follows:

Rb

cos q
cos qz

where q denes the incidence angle which is expressed as

(6)

M.A.M. Ramli et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

377

16

Wind Speed (m/s)

12

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Fig. 3. Hourly wind speed in Yanbu.

cos q sin d sin 4 cos b  sin d cos 4 sin b cos g

cos d cos 4 cos b cos d sin 4 sin b cos g

(7)

and qz is the zenith angle at solar noon, dened as

cos qz cos 4 cos d sin 4 sin d

(8)

where 4 is the latitude, d is the solar declination angle, and g is

azimuth of the surface. The declination angle is the angular distance of the sun north (positive) or south (negative) of the equator.
The declination angle varies through the year from 23.45
north to
23.45
south and reaches the minimum/maximum at the southern/
northern summer solstices. The declination angle is calculated using the following equation [32]:




284 n
d 23:45
sin 360

365

(9)

where n is the day of year (1e365).

The derating factor is the reduction of the PV array output due to
dust on the surface of the array, wiring, shading, aging, snow
covering, temperature losses, or anything else that would cause the
output of the PV array to deviate from that expected under ideal
condition.
The efciency of PV decreases as temperature increases. The
temperature derating factor is dened as [33]:

ftemp






T
Ta;NOCT

T
1 ap Ta IT c;NOCT
c;STC
IT;NOCT




hmp;STC
T
Ta;NOCT
1 ap IT c;NOCT
IT;NOCT
0:9

(10)

where Ta is the ambient temperature (
C), Tc,NOCT is the nominal

operating cell temperature (
C), Ta,NOCT is the ambient temperature
at which the nominal operating cell temperature (NOCT) is dened
(20
C), IT,NOCT is the solar radiation at which the NOCT is dened
(0.8 kW/m2) hmp,STC is the efciency of the PV array at its maximum
power point under STC (%), and ap is the power temperature coefcient (%/
C). The values of Tc,NOCT, ap, hmp,STC are typically
included as part of PV manufacturers' product data.

The hourly solar irradiation (global horizontal radiation) in

Yanbu is illustrated in Fig. 4. The solar irradiation varies from 0.0 to
1.1 kW/m2. The annual average solar radiation in Yanbu is about
0.26 kW/m2 or 5.95 kWh/(m2 day).
The hourly temperature in Yanbu is shown in Fig. 5. The temperature varies from 15
C to 40
C. The annual average temperature in Yanbu is about 29.1
C.
2.3. Economic model
The economic model for HOMER simulation is developed using
net present cost (NPC) which is the total cost of installing and
operating the system over its lifetime. It models each individual
system by performing an hourly time-step simulation for one year.
The total NPC of a system is calculated by

CNPC;tot

Cann;tot


CRF i; Rproj

(11)

where Cann,tot is the total annualized cost ($/yr), i is the annual real
interest rate (%), Rproj is the project lifetime (yr), and CRF() is a
function returning the capital recovery factor.
The capital recovery factor (CRF) is a ratio given by

CRFi; N

i1 iN
1 iN  1

(12)

where i is the annual real interest rate and N is the years.

It is assumed that all prices escalate at the same rate. HOMER
uses an annual real interest rate rather than a nominal interest rate
in the computations. However, the annual real interest rate can be
obtained from the nominal interest rate by using

i0  f
1f

(13)

where i is the annual real interest rate, i' is the annual nominal
interest rate, and f is the annual ination rate.
The levelized cost of energy (COE) is the average cost per kWh of
useful electrical energy produced by the system. The COE is
calculated by dividing the annualized cost of producing electricity

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M.A.M. Ramli et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

1.2

Solar Radiation (kW/m)

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Fig. 4. Hourly solar irradiation in Yanbu.

45

40

Temperature (C)

35

30

25

20

15

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Fig. 5. Hourly temperature in Yanbu.

by the total electric load served, as follows:

COE

Cann;tot
Eserved

Table 1
Azimuth angles.

(14)

where Eserved is the total electrical load served (kWh/yr).

3. System components and specication
The PV array used in the simulation is a 1-kW monocrystalline
with Tc,NOCT, ap, and hmp,STC of 47
C, 0.43%/
C, and 15.67%,
respectively. Derating factor due to manufacturers' output tolerance is assumed to be fPV 95% with the ground reectance at the
location of rg 15% (sandy soil). The value of azimuth angle is
presented in Table 1 and the latitude of Yanbu is 4 24.09
North.
With the wind speed, the incident of solar irradiation on the

Facing

Azimuth angle (
)

S
SW
W
NW
N
NE
E
SE

0 or 360
45
90
135
180
225 or 135
270 or 90
315 or 45

surface of PV array, and temperature as shown in Figs. 3e5, the

electricity production by the wind turbine and PV array are presented in Table 2. The power output of PV array is computed by

M.A.M. Ramli et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

Table 2
Electricity production.

379

Table 3
PV Data.

Quantity

PV array

Wind turbine

PV array

Rated capacity
Mean output
Capacity factor
Total production

1 kW
0.23 kW
22.60%
1982 kWh/yr

1 kW
0.16 kW
16.10%
1412 kWh/yr

Lifetime
Cost of investment
Cost of replacement
Cost of O&M

using MATLAB according to (4)e(10). The power output of PV array

on the tilt angle varied from 0.00
to 90.00
with the azimuth angles from 0
to 315
are shown in Fig. 6. The best tilt angle is obtained at 22.92
for azimuth g 0
(facing South) which offers the
highest yearly average output power of 0.23 kW. The 1-kW wind
turbine provides 0.16 kW yearly average output power with the hub
height of 20 m.
The wind turbine capacity factor is 16.10%. It means that the
actual wind turbine output is 16.10% of the wind turbine capacity. It
requires wind speed of 12 m/s to produce the wind turbine full
capacity of 1 kW. The PV array has a capacity factor of 22.60% which
is higher than that of the wind turbine. As a consequence, the PV
array has a capability to generate the total electrical energy per year
of 1.4 times higher than the wind turbine for the same sizes at the
same location. Therefore, combining a 1-kW PV array and a 1-kW
wind turbine will produce the total electricity of 3394 kWh/yr.
From this information, the PV array and wind turbine sizes can be
extrapolated to produce more electricity for the current or future
electricity demand load.
3.1. Cost of energy (COE)
The cost components are critical inputs for the development of
energy and COE analyses of a hybrid energy system. They also play
an important role in determining the capacity additions that will
serve the electricity demand. The cost components consist of capital, replacement, and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs. A
hybrid renewable energy system has high capital costs but very low
O&M costs due to no fuel expense. A wind/solar hybrid system costs
are the cost components of the PV array, wind turbine, inverter, and
battery.
The PV array data used in the simulation is provided in Table 3.
The PV array is typically covered by 25 years warranty with lifetime
expected at 30 years. The average price of the PV array, including

30 yr
$ 2000/kW
$ 1200/kW
$ 30/kW/yr

the installation cost, is set at $2000/kW. The O&M cost is estimated

to be $30/kW/yr. The O&M cost for PV facility includes periodic
array water washing and tilt angle adjustment. The replacement
cost of the PV array is assumed to have a 60% fall after 30 years.
Table 4 shows the data of wind turbine. The capital cost of the
wind turbine generator used is $3000/kW, including the installation cost. The wind turbine works for 120,000 h throughout its
estimated lifetime of 20 years. The estimated O&M cost for the
wind turbine is about $40/kW/yr according to the report from US
Energy Information Administration (EIA) for onshore wind [34],
while the replacement cost is estimated to decline by 50% over the
past 20 years. Most of wind turbine O&M cost is a xed amount
each year for periodic mechanical and electrical repairs. In this case,
when a wind turbine comes to the end of its technical design life,
some of the internal mechanical and electrical parts are needed to
replace, while the steel tower itself would be in good condition and
safe.
Inverters for renewable system applications have not been
designed to produce the reactive power. According to the new
regulations adopted by the EU countries, an inverter needs to be
able to supply the reactive power. In such a case, the inverter should
be oversized in order to guarantee the availability of reactive power
for the whole year and maximize the energy harvested from the
renewable system without reducing the active power production.
Brecl and Topi
c [35] recommended to oversize the inverter to 30%
related to PV array sizing if all economic aspects are taken into
account, and this inverter sizing consideration is employed in this
study. A brief summary of the data for the inverter is presented in
Table 5. The inverter lifetime is set at 30 years, as recommended by
IEA [36] for the utility scale used inverter. The inverter lifetime of 30
years is with replacement.
Batteries are used as storage devices in order to alleviate the
mismatch between the load demand and electricity generation. The
battery used for the simulation is a 4-V deep cycle type battery
rated at 1900 Ah. The lifetime of the battery is 12 years for operating within the SOC between 40% and 100%. The nominal energy
capacity of the battery is 7.6 kWh and the lifetime throughput is
10,569 kWh. The battery price is $1200/unit and the replacement
cost is assumed to be equal to the capital cost. The O&M costs are
estimated at $ 60/unit/yr for watering the battery periodically. The
data for the battery is provided in Table 6.
4. Results and discussions
4.1. Electric production ability
In Weibull function, the variations in wind speed are

Table 4
Wind turbine data.
Wind turbine

Fig. 6. Yearly average PV power output at some azimuth angles.

Lifetime
Cost of investment
Cost of replacement
Cost of O&M

20 yr
$ 3000/kW
$ 1500/kW
$ 40/kW/yr

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M.A.M. Ramli et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

1.4

Table 5
Inverter data.

1.2

Inverter
30 yr
$ 400/kW
$ 375/kW
$ 20/kW/yr

Power (kW)

Lifetime
Cost of investment
Cost of replacement
Cost of O&M

1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2

Table 6
Battery data.

0.0

Battery
Lifetime
Cost of investment
Cost of replacement
Cost of O&M

12 yr
$ 1200/unit
$ 1200/unit
$ 60/unit/yr

8
Wind Speed (m/s)

12

16

Fig. 8. Wind turbine power curve.

Table 7
Levelized cost.

characterized by the Weibull shape factor k 1.28 and the Weibull

scale factor c 3.91 m/s as given in Fig. 7. The graph shows that the
location has gusty winds and the winds tend to vary over a wide
range of speeds.
Fig. 8 shows the 1-kW wind turbine power curve which has the
start-up and cut-in wind speeds of 2.5 m/s and 3.0 m/s, respectively. The output power of 1 kW will be obtained at wind speed of
12 m/s. The anemometer height used for wind speed measurement
is 10 m, while the hub of wind turbine at which the rotor sits is
20 m above the ground. The altitude of site is 10 m.
The simulation is conducted based on 25-years project duration,
2% annual real interest rate, and considering the total battery
storage sizes of 22.8 kWh for 36 h/autonomy (equivalent to 36 h of
average load). From the simulation results shown in Table 7, the
wind levelized cost of energy is more expensive than the solar
energy. It is due to the electricity production by the wind turbine
being less than that of the PV array. As presented in Fig. 9, the PV
array shares 58% of the total electricity production, while the wind
turbine gives 42% if both PV array and wind turbine are used in the
wind/solar hybrid system with the same sizes. The total energy
production is 3394 kWh/yr with the COE of $0.329/kWh. The energy production from the PV is 1981 kWh/yr (58%), while the wind
turbine produces 1412 kWh/yr (42%).

Levelized cost
PV
$0.0637/kWh

Wind
$0.149/kWh

4.2. Wind/solar hybrid system performance

For further analysis of the wind/solar hybrid system, a small
community load demand in Yanbu Industrial City (YIC) is taken into
consideration for the simulation case study. Fig. 10 illustrates the
hybrid conguration that is used for the simulation. The PV
generator produces direct current (DC) electricity. The wind turbine
generator does not produce DC electricity, so a built-in rectier is
used to convert the wind turbine output to DC. The DC electricity
from both PV generator and wind turbine generator is converted to
alternating current (AC) via inverter before supplying the AC load. If
the DC electricity generated by the PV generator or wind turbine
generator is larger than demand, the electricity is diverted to
charge the batteries when the batteries are not fully charged,
otherwise it is accounted as the unusable excess electricity and
must be dumped.
The load prole, as shown in Fig. 11, has the average value of
77.2 kW or 1852 kWh/day and the peak value of 125 kW.
The average load of 1852 kWh/day is equivalent to the total load

20

Frequency (%)

15

10

0
0

10

Wind Speed (m/s)

Wind speed data

Best-fit Weibull (k=1.28, c=3.91 m/s)

Fig. 7. Weibull distribution, Yanbu.

12

14

M.A.M. Ramli et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

381

0.6

PV
Wind

Power (kW)

0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Fig. 9. Wind/solar hybrid electric production.

a result, the PV and wind turbine respectively generate

392,070 kWh/yr and 283,912 kWh/yr as shown in Fig. 12.
The wind/solar hybrid conguration gives the NPC of $3,545,220
with the COE of $0.329/kWh. The NPC of the wind/solar hybrid
system is dominated by the batteries (57.43%) and wind turbine
(23.16%) costs as given in Fig. 13.
However, some amount of the energy production cannot be
used to supply the load. This mismatch is due to the intermittent
nature of wind and solar energy that cannot follow the load consumptions perfectly. As the result, there is unmet electric load of
20.6% and unused energy production or excess electricity of 5.6% for
this hybrid system conguration. The total load served is about

Fig. 10. Energy ow diagram for wind/solar hybrid system.

Load (kW)

150
max
daily high
mean
daily low
min

100
50
0

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Ann

Fig. 11. Load prole.

to be served of 675,982 kWh/yr. As indicated before, the PV array

shares 58% of the total electricity production, while the wind turbine gives 42% if both PV array and wind turbine are used in the
wind/solar hybrid system with the same sizes. Therefore, PV and
wind turbine required to fulll this total load should have size
about 200 kW. If the total battery storage is 36 h/autonomy, the
hybrid system needs 4560 kWh nominal capacity of the battery. As

536,412 kWh/yr or 79.4% of the total demand of 675,982 kWh/yr.

To identify how the unmet electric load and excess electricity
occurred, this is done by referring to the day's conditions within the
entire year. For example, one day period of load prole at
September 22 is as shown in Fig. 14. The electricity demand is
supplied by both renewable power output and battery at
00.00e03.00 h. The renewable power output comes from wind

120

PV
Wind

Power (kW)

90

60

30

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Fig. 12. Wind/solar hybrid electric production of 675,982 kWh/year.

Nov

Dec

382

M.A.M. Ramli et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

system conguration has used 4560 kWh nominal capacity of the

battery. In order to analyze the effect of battery size on the excess
electricity and unmet load, the battery nominal capacity is doubled
to 9120 kWh.
From the simulation results, it is found that the excess electricity
is reduced from 5.6% to 4.2%, while the unmet electric load decreases from 20.6% to 19.3%. Further increasing the battery size also
shows that it does not reduce the level of unmet electric load
drastically. The unmet electric load decreases by about 0.3% for an
increase in battery capacity of 100% as shown in Fig. 15. It is also
found that the unmet electric load will be 0.0% if the hybrid system
uses 6300% of the battery capacity or equivalent to 63  4560 kWh
( 287,270 kWh). Meanwhile, the level of excess electricity does
not change signicantly and remains at 4.2%. It is due to the fact
Fig. 13. Wind/solar hybrid components costs.

Power (kW)

200
battery charge power
battery discharge power

100

Battery SOC (%)

10

15

20

10

15

20

10
15
Septem ber 22

20

60
battery SOC

50

40

400

renewable output

Power (kW)

demands
unmet load
excess electricity

200

Fig. 14. Time series power delivery.

turbine only since there is no solar irradiation at that moment. At

04.00e09.00 the battery SOC has reached its minimum value of
40%, while the power from wind and solar resources is not sufcient to serve the load demand. Therefore, some unmet loads occur
at such condition. At 10.00e14.00 both wind and solar power are
sufcient to fulll all demand and also charge the battery. At
15.00e18.00 the output power from renewable resources is very
high to serve the load demand, charge the battery and produce
some amount of excess electricity. When the sun is unavailable at
19.00e23.00, the load demand is served by both wind turbine and
battery power.
4.3. Increasing battery sizes
The battery has capability to alleviate the mismatch between
load and renewable power generation. The excess electricity can be
used to charge the battery and in turn, when the power from
renewable generation becomes too low, the battery discharges to
serve the unmet load. The aforementioned wind/solar hybrid

that the battery does not produce electricity by itself, but it is used
for optimizing the energy in and out for the hybrid system according to its capacity level. Increasing the battery size contributes
to the higher NPC and hence, to the COE of the hybrid system.
However, the battery is still useful to minimize the unmet load [37].
4.4. Increasing PV and/or wind turbine sizes
The sizes of PV and wind turbine are related to the electric power production. The more the PV or wind turbine sizes are
increased, the more electric power will be generated and hence,
unmet load can be reduced to a minimum percentage. As shown in
Table 8, increasing PV or wind turbine sizes makes the wind/solar
hybrid system producing more electricity in order to minimize
unserved loads, but it raises the unused electricity due to excess
production.
The bigger size of PV or wind turbine also gives additional expenses to the hybrid system and therefore it increases total NPC of
the system. However, the COE of hybrid system depends on the cost

M.A.M. Ramli et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

383

4.5. Combining PV and wind turbine sizes

22
20

16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Battery Size (%)

(a)

5.8

Excess Electricity(%)

5.6

4.6. Increasing production capacity

5.4
5.2
5

Unmet Electric Load (%)

Unmet Electric Load (%)

18

The electricity demand used for this study is 675,982 kWh/yr.

The PV and wind turbine sizes can be combined to produce total
electricity of 675,982 kWh/yr. However, this amount of electricity
production will never meet the electricity demand. This is due to
the intermittent nature of wind and solar energy. Nevertheless, the
unmet electric load can be minimized by choosing the best combination of PV and wind turbine sizes. As shown in Fig. 16, the best
combination of systems to obtain the lowest unmet electric load is
obtained by using 63% of PV and 37% of wind turbine to generate
total electricity in the wind/solar hybrid system. This combination
gives 20.8% unserved electric load and 5.4% excess electricity.
According to the total NPC and the COE, employing the PV larger
than wind turbine sizes offers lower total NPC and thus lower COE
of the hybrid system (as shown in Figs. 17 and 18). This is because
the PV is less expensive and generates more electricity than the
wind turbine at the same sizes on the site.

4.8
4.6
4.4
4.2

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Battery Size (%)

32
30
28
26
24
22
20
20
100

15

(b)

50

10

Fig. 15. Increasing battery size related to: (a) unmet electric load, (b) excess electricity.

Excess Electricity(%)

PV Size (%)

Fig. 16. PV size combination.

Table 8
Hybrid system Congurations.
Conguration (PV, wind turbine)

Energy production (kWh/yr)

Total load (kWh/yr)

Load served (kWh/yr)

Unmet load

Excess electricity

COE ($/kWh)

200-kW,
400-kW,
200-kW,
400-kW,

675,982
1,075,003
961,141
1,357,429

675,982
675,982
675,982
675,982

536,412
661,088
627,198
673,395

20.6%
2.2%
7.2%
0.4%

5.6%
24.7%
21.4%
40%

0.329
0.313
0.357
0.370

200-kW
200-kW
400-kW
400-kW

of producing electricity and the total electric load served as given

by (10). The total NPC of 400-kW PV, 200-kW wind turbine
conguration is $ 4,037,980 and this value is higher than the 200kW PV, 200-kW wind turbine conguration ($ 3,545,220). As
shown in Table 8, the COE of 400-kW PV, 200-kW wind turbine
conguration is cheaper than the 200-kW PV, 200-kW wind turbine conguration. It is clear that applying greater sizes of PV than
wind turbine for the wind/solar hybrid system will produce more
energy and more electricity demands can be served and hence, it
decreases the COE. However, on average wind energy is best at
night while solar PV energy is only available during the day hours.
By combining these two renewable resources for a wind/solar
hybrid system, it gives an advantage to produce more reliable
electricity.

It is clear that making the production capacity of the wind/solar

hybrid system as large as the total demand of electricity will lead to
some unserved loads. The production capacity should be greater
than the total demand of electricity to ensure that the entire load is
served. The ratio of the electricity production capacity to the total
electricity demand of 150% gives the unmet electric load of 3.30% as
shown in Fig. 19. This system is based on a combination of 63% PV
and 37% wind turbine with 4560 kWh nominal capacity of the
battery. The larger electricity production capacity gives chance for
the generating system to serve more electricity demand, but
increasing unused electricity is unavoidable. By using the battery
capacity of 22,800 kWh (ve times of its initial value), the unmet
electric load decreases to 0.0%, and the excess electricity is reduced
slightly from 21.6% to 19.3%. Using a very large size of battery is

M.A.M. Ramli et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 374e385

Total NPC (million $)

384

4.4

solar hybrid system.

4.2

5. Conclusion

4
3.8
3.6
3.4
3.2
3

20

40

60

80

100

PV Size (%)
Fig. 17. PV size combination vs total NPC.

0.46

Acknowledgment

0.44

This work was supported by the Deanship of Scientic Research

(DSR), King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, under grant No. (135-815D1435). The authors, therefore, gratefully acknowledge the DSR
technical and nancial support.

COE ($/kWh)

0.42
0.4

References

0.38
0.36
0.34
0.32
0.3

20

40

60

80

100

PV Size (%)
Fig. 18. PV size combination vs total COE.

Unmet Electric Load (%)

A technical and economic analysis of wind/solar hybrid system

performance in west coast area of Saudi Arabia was presented
based on electricity production and energy cost. For this analysis,
the hybrid system congurations have been investigated by taking
into consideration the unmet load and excess electricity as the
main key parameters in determining the best combination of systems. Based on the simulation results, it has been demonstrated
that the west coast area of Saudi Arabia has sufcient potential
energy from wind and solar to provide electricity. However, wind
turbine produces less energy than PV array of the same size and at
the same site. Wind turbine and battery are important components
to meet load demand at night hours in a wind/solar hybrid system,
despite the fact that both components contribute to the largest cost
for the hybrid system. Therefore, it is important to select the best
size of the wind/solar hybrid system components in order to ensure
that all electricity demands are served with minimum cost of energy production.

25
20
15
10
5
0
25
20

160
15

140
10

Excess Electricity(%)

120
5

100

Elect. Production (%)

Fig. 19. Electricity production capacity.

uneconomically, however it still plays a signicant role in the wind/

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