Abstract
Microgrid is a localised power generation infrastructure designed to provide continuous and reliable power supply to a small, specific region. The increasing concern towards environmental sustainability has resulted in the prioritisation of non-emitting Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) while optimal sizing of microgrid. Optimal sizing of generation units at minimum cost with minimum emission satisfying various practical constraints is a challenging bi-objective optimization problem of power system known as Economic-Emission Load Dispatch (EELD). Metaheuristic approaches are predominantly used to solve the EELD problem. This article explores the advanced metaheuristic methods to solve EELD problem and proposes application of African Vulture Optimization Algorithm (AVOA) to subsequently address the EELD problem of a microgrid combining diesel, wind, and solar energy sources based on field data of a specific location in Jaisalmer, India. AVOA emulates the foraging and navigation patterns of vultures, incorporating effective exploration and exploitation characteristics. The effectiveness of AVOA is first validated using three standard test systems of 10, 6 (IEEE30-bus), and 40 units with/without transmission losses, prior applying it for microgrid. The obtained results are compared with several other popular optimization techniques to establish the efficacy of proposed method. Further, AVOA is employed to analyse the impact of individual RESs on microgrid's cost and emissions across three distinct generation scenarios. The viability score is employed to evaluate the efficacy of all techniques along with other significant performance indices. Statistical data tests such as ANOVA, Wilcoxon, and robustness are employed to assess the statistical confidence of the AVOA. Additionally, a multi-comparison post-hoc TukeyHSD test is introduced which proves the superiority of AVOA. Results establish AVOA as the most effective solution for addressing the EELD problem in microgrid (all sources), with significant reduction of 5.25% and 33.09% in cost (323318.21$/day) and emission (of 2433.95 Tons/day) respectively compared to the closest competitive method.