Optimizing Clean Power Everywhere

Economic Optimization
of Hybrid Renewable
Microgrids with
HOMER
Dr. Peter Lilienthal
peter@homerenergy.com

1790 30th St, Suite 100, Boulder, Colorado 80301, USA http://
www.homerenergy.com +1-720-565-4046
 HOMER
Industry standard for hybrid micro-grids

Conventional resources

Renewable resources

Storage

Load Management
 HOMER
NREL: 1992-2009
Original developers now at HOMER Energy
107,000 users in 193 countries

New users per month

1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
 HOMER Analysis Layers

Simulation
Accurate analysis of time varying
loads and resources require an hour-
by-hour analysis for entire year
Sensitivity Analysis
Optimization Optimization
Find the least cost solution
Simulation
Sensitivity Analysis Hourly Energy Balance

The data is never good enough.

What if.?
 Too Many Choices

-tu r b i n es
Hydro Micro
Geothermal
Micro-grids

Demand
Response
Load
Ma n a
geme
nt
Smart grids

Clean Power Everywhere

 What is best?
Depends on the application
Resources
Loads
Equipment prices
Equipment performance
A confused mind says No!
HOMER fits the pieces together
Clean Power Everywhere
 Lessons from the Remote Market
What to do when the wind blows too
strongly
Secondary loads
What to do when it stops too abruptly
Load management as spinning reserve
What to do with storage
Use it sparingly until costs come down
Stop thinking about base and peak loads
Flexibility is the buzzword
 Clean Power Evolution

Large u)li)es Smaller systems

Security obstacles Liquid fuels from oil
Regulatory obstacles High renewable penetra)ons

Micro-grids with distributed controls for reliability and eciency

 Different Definitions of Penetration
Instantaneous
Penetration
High winds in the middle
of the night
Most useful measure for
integration analysis
Factor of five difference
from energy metric

From: High Penetrations of Renewable Energy for Island Grids in Lilienthal, Power Engineering, November, 2007
 Penetration Analysis from HOMER

Molokai (8.3 meter per second wind resource)

$80
(US$ Millions)
Lifecycle Cost

$60
$40
No Wind
$20 High
Medium Low
$0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Diesel Fuel Consumption (Million liters per year)