Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Conversion and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman Optimal design and implementation of solar PV-wind-biogas-VRFB storage integrated smart hybrid microgrid for ensuring zero loss of power supply probability Tathagata Sarkar a , Ankur Bhattacharjee b, ⁎ , Hiranmay Samanta a , Konika Bhattacharya c , Hiranmay Saha a a Centre of Excellence for Green Energy and Sensor Systems, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, India b Department of Electrical Engineering, Institute of Engineering & Management, Kolkata, India c Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Microgrid Solar PV Wind Biogas VRFB Energy management Financial analysis ABSTRACT Uninterrupted access to electric power has become the basic need of today’s world. Rural parts of many countries still do not have access to electricity or have electric power access to weak distribution grids with inadequate transmission and distribution system infrastructure. However, the countries where there is an abundance of solar radiation, a good potential of bio-degradable waste and average availability of wind source, access to electricity for those remote areas can be managed by distributed power generation. Considering the fact that the renewable energy sources (Solar, Wind etc.) are intermittent in nature, battery energy storage systems (BESS) and other reservoirs like biogas energy sources are the potential candidates to be integrated with the renewable sources to ensure continuous access to electricity and energy security. In this paper, a unique combination of Solar PV, Wind, Biomass and Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB) storage integrated hybrid Microgrid has been modeled and implemented practically for the first time. The capacity selection of different renewable sources for sa- tisfying daily energy demand and their techno-commercial optimization has been performed through HOMER simulation. Further, the peak load shaving that is a limitation of HOMER model, has been established through PSCAD simulation by providing the real life data of different renewable sources, VRFB storage and the load profile as input to the model. The simulation model performances have been validated by a practical 10 kW P solar PV, 1 kW wind and 15 kVA Biogas generator integrated with 1 kW 6 h VRFB storage based Microgrid installed at India Institute of Engineering Science and Technology campus, India. In addition to these, zero loss of power supply probability (LPSP) has been ensured by implementing smart scheduling and controller considering the intermittency of the renewable sources. As a part of the financial analysis, project Investment on Return (IRR) and pay back has been calculated considering initial investment, operation and maintenance cost and revenue of generation. 1. Introduction Continuous growth and development of a country are measured by the increasing demand for its energy usage. In countries like India major geographical part is covered by rural areas which either do not have access to electricity or connected to the weak/unstable distribu- tion grid. The Government of India has an aggressive target to extend the national grid to each and every part of the country by 2018 and 24 × 7 hours of electric power to all domestic consumers by March’2019 [1]. The major limitation to execute this project is the inadequate grid infrastructure for both the transmission and the distribution systems in rural areas. In order to match the load demand and energy generation as a demand response strategy, distributed re- newable energy sources can be a potential solution. Due to the poor capacity utilization factor (CUF), only solar PV (CUF-17%) or only wind power generator (CUF-42%) may not show reliable performance to meet continuous load demand. Thus bio degradable wastes and animal manure may be used to produce biogas electricity and can be mixed with other renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and battery energy storage system (BESS). Therefore, an intelligent and targeted combination of renewable energy sources and BESS operating through a distinct network for specified load patterns forming a hybrid microgrid https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2019.04.025 Received 3 January 2019; Received in revised form 4 April 2019; Accepted 6 April 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: ankurbhattacharjeejpg@gmail.com (A. Bhattacharjee). Energy Conversion and Management 191 (2019) 102–118 0196-8904/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. T