Impact of wave energy integration on sizing and energy management of a microgrid: case study

This paper investigates impact of integrating a wave energy converter (WEC) on sizing the battery and solar panels, and energy management of a microgrid utilising wind, solar and diesel generator at the generation side. An integrated co–optimisation model for sizing and energy management is proposed to minimise the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) and dump load ratio (DLR), while maximising the reliability of power supply. Parasitism predation algorithm is employed to solve the multi–objective optimisation problem. Moreover, a repair–based penalty approach is integrated for effective constraint handling. The Westray Island standalone microgrid in Scotland is considered as a case study. Annual hourly weather data and demand profile of Westray Island are used to simulate the system in MATLAB environment. Results show that the WEC acts as an energy buffer in the microgrid with about 6% higher LCOE and 85% higher reliability of the power supply compared to the case without WEC integration. It also demonstrates that the diesel generator plays a minor role in the microgrid with WEC, which further reduces emissions. However, with the WEC integration, the DLR has increased by 124%, compared to the case without WEC.