Reliability and economic analysis of a stand-alone PV system to electrify three Islands in Taiwan

Photovoltaic-battery system is a sustainable option for isolated electrical power generation at locations receiving abundant sunshine. This paper presents an optimization method for calculating the optimal capacity planning of stand-alone photovoltaic (SPV) system installed at three Islands of Taiwan with high reliability and minimum cost. The Genetic Algorithm (GA) for investigating the optimal capacity planning of SPV system was conducted. The total cost of the initial cost, installed cost, replacement cost, operation and maintenance cost was used to define the objective function. The capacity allocation problem based on GA is to find global optimal solution within a satisfied computational time. Different degrees of the system reliability are investigated to achieve the long-term planning requirement.