Analysis of PV/Wind systems by integer linear programming

Abstract

This paper presents a mathematical formulation for integrating renewable energy sources in order to build up economical hybrid energetic systems in the case where each type of energy are only available as specific units. For instance, we may need to combine photovoltaic panels and wind turbines with specific capacities to meet an energetic demand in a specific site with a lowest cost. Therefore, determining the optimal energy to be installed leads of determining the number of units from each source. This problem is formulated as an integer linear program where the objective function to be minimized is the initial capital investment and where the decision variables are the numbers of units which should be pure integer numbers. The proposed method is generic since it is directly adaptive to various sites, demands, and different type of renewable energy sources. To illustrate our approach, we provide some examples and scenarios combining PV and wind turbines units.