Engineering Design and Optimization of Large-Scale Solar Photovoltaic and Wind Turbine Installation in an Urban Environment

Wind turbine and photovoltaic (PV) technologies will play a significant role in the world energy future. However, a lack of awareness of the potential of renewables is a significant challenge in sustainable energy development. The potential of solar and wind energy sources in producing electricity to meet the electrical demands of the University of Lethbridge was evaluated. Furthermore, expanding the research to a large area, a multi-criteria approach based on geographic information systems (GIS) and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) was developed to estimate rooftop photovoltaic potential of buildings in an urban environment, the City of Lethbridge. The unreliability of renewable resources is an impediment to developing renewable projects. An optimal sizing strategy was developed using a particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique to determine the optimum configuration of photovoltaic panels, wind turbines and battery units minimizing the annual system cost while maximizing the reliability of the hybrid system.The University of Lethbridge, The Mitacs Program (Canada), in cooperation with NOVUS Environmental, Guelph, Ontari