Optimal design of PV-Battery Microgrid Incorporating Lead-acid Battery Aging Model

The urgent need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving electrical power systems reliability and quality, has led to increasing the interest of installing PV-based microgrids. To ensure a reliable and cost-effective operation of the microgrid, the installed components and the operating parameters of them should be optimized. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive optimal design methodology for a PV-battery microgrid to calculate the optimal number of lead-acid batteries, PV-modules, and the battery bank depth of discharge (DOD) value. The developed approach aims to minimize the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), considering the annual total loss of power supply (TLPS) limitation. Moreover, an accurate model for the battery lifetime estimation is presented, based on the physicochemical mechanism of the lead-acid battery. In addition, the effect of the battery bank size and the DOD on battery capacity degradation is investigated. The results demonstrate that the proposed methodology is capable to optimize the microgrid components size and parameters while satisfying all technical and operational constraints.