An Investigation into the Contribution of Hybrid Renewable Energy System to Utility Grid in the Regions with Arid Climate

Abstract

Increasing the emissions of carbon have a negative impact on our environment, since the beginning of industrial revolution. There is a wide consensus that climate change occurred due to human behavior, mainly from burning fossil fuels. This raises the future concern of the world carbon-based energy and economy, particularly, developing countries that heavily dependent on Oil, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) which is the case study of this research. It has a power sector which is heavily reliant on fossil fuels. The fuel types used by current generation units in the KSA are Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO), Natural Gas, Diesel Oil, and Crude Oil. The conventional generation and continued use of the fossil fuels as the main source of electricity will cause fuels depletion, environmental pollution, and impacts to human health through the emission of exhaust gases.

Implementing renewable energy would be the way to reduce the country’s dependency on fossil fuels for power generation. In KSA, there are several researches are done for renewable energy resources availability and the growth of power generation. However, studies assessing the performance, cost, and effects of different Renewable Energy Sources (RES) on the utility grid and demand curve are very limited.

This dissertation illustrates the big picture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia regarding the current status of power generation, consumption, and the expected increase in power demand & supply, as well as availability and assessment of the most effective renewable energy resources. It also presents a techno-economic analysis of a grid-connected solar PV-wind hybrid system for different locations inside the country along with sensitivity analysis to give a blueprint of the system reliability and determine how sensitive the outputs are to any changes in the system’s variables. In addition, the grid codes of developed countries are investigated in order to form the infrastructure for renewable energy projects, build up the sector and take the advantages of the exploitable renewable energy sources, and bring knowledge to system operators from other developed and experienced countries.