Comparison of techno-economic optimisation models for rural hybrid microgrid design

This paper investigates the design of a hybrid renewable energy and diesel generator microgrid for a remote aboriginal community in Western Australia using two techno-economic design optimisation programs, HOMER and XENDEE. Each program approaches the design optimisation problem in a different way (evolutionary simulation algorithm vs linear programming) and this paper seeks to compare the results from the different approaches. The optimisation results from the two programs are very similar for the rural hybrid microgrid case study, although there are differences in how each program reached its conclusions. A key difference identified is how each program handles the time-sequential nature of the demand profile and renewable energy resource.