NEOM City in Saudi Arabia is planned to be the first environmentally friendly city in the world that is powered by renewable energy sources minimizing CO₂ emissions to reduce the effect of global warming according to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has had a problem with water scarcity. The main factors affecting water security are unequal water distribution, wrong use of water resources and using bad or less efficient irrigation techniques. This paper is aimed to provide a detailed feasibility and techno-economic evaluation of using several scenarios of a stand-alone hybrid renewable energy system to satisfy the electrical energy needs for an environmentally friendly seawater desalination plant which feeds 150 m⁻³ day⁻¹ of freshwater to 1000 people in NEOM City, Saudi Arabia. The first scenario is based on hybrid solar photovoltaic PV, fuel cells (FC) with a hydrogen storage system and batteries system (BS), while the second and third scenarios are based on hybrid PV/BS and PV/FC with a hydrogen storage system, respectively. HOMER^® software was used to obtain the optimal configuration based on techno-economic analysis of each component of the hybrid renewable energy systems and an economic and environmental point of view based on the values of net present cost (NPC) and cost of energy (COE). Based on the obtained results, the best configuration is PV/FC/BS. The optimal size and related costs for the optimal size are 235 kW PV array, 30 kW FC, 144 batteries, 30 kW converter, 130 kW electrolyzer, and 25 kg hydrogen tank is considered the best option for powering a 150 m³ reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant. The values of net present cost (NPC) and the cost of energy (COE) are $438,657 and $0.117/kWh, respectively. From the authors’ point view, the proposed system is one among the foremost environmentally friendly systems to provide electric energy to the seawater desalination plant, especially when connecting to the utility grid, because it is ready to reduce a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions due to using oil/nature gas in utility generation stations to reduce the effect of global warming.

This research aims to experimentally improve the overall efficiency of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels by coating them with hydrophobic SiO₂ nanomaterial. Also, an accurate mathematical model was used to estimate the parameters of the PV panel, which is a non-linear optimization problem. Based on the experimental data and using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, the optimal five parameters of a single diode model of a PV panel were determined in this study. This experimental work was conducted and carried out in the Renewable Energy Laboratory of Assiut University, Egypt. A comparative analysis was completed for three identical solar PV panels; the first panel was coated with hydrophobic SiO₂ nanomaterial, so it was considered to be a self-cleaning panel; the second panel was uncoated and cleaned manually on a daily basis; and the third panel was kept dusty all the time through the experimental investigation, and was used as a reference. Experimentally, the output power of the PV panels was monitored for each panel in this study. Also, the anti-static and anti-reflection effects of coating solar PV panels with hydrophobic SiO₂ nanomaterial were investigated experimentally. According to the obtained experimental results, it was found that the use of SiO₂ coating for PV panels results in the better performance of the PV panels. The overall efficiency of the coated panel increased by 15% and 5%, compared to the dusty panel and the uncoated panel which was manually cleaned daily, respectively.

This research work aims to provide detailed feasibility, a techno-economic evaluation, and energy management of stand-alone hybrid photovoltaic-diesel-battery (PV/DG/B) system. The proposed system can be applied to supply a specific load that is far away from the utility grid (UG) connection, and it is located in Minya city, Egypt, as a real case study. The daily required desalinated water is 250 m3. The total brackish water demands are 350-500 m3 and 250-300 m3 of water in summer and winter seasons, respectively. Two different sizes of reverse osmosis (RO) units; RO-250 and RO-500, two energy control dispatch strategies; load following (LF) and cycle charging (CC); two sizes of DG; 5 kW and 10 kW are considered in the case study. The cost of energy, renewable fraction, environmental impact, and breakeven grid extension distance are the main criteria that have been considered to determine the optimal size of PV/DG/B to supply the load demand. HOMER® software is used to perform the simulation and optimization. For this case study, the minimum cost of energy and the minimum total present cost are 0.074 $/kWh and 207676 $, respectively. This is achieved by using a RO-500 unit and a LF dispatch control strategy. The related sizes to the best option of PV/DG/B are 120 kW PV array, 10 kW DG, 64 batteries, and 50 kW converter. A comparison with grid extension and installing stand-alone diesel generation is also carried out. The results of comparison have confirmed that the grid connection is better than all considered options using the RO-250 unit. However, for the RO-500 unit, all options of hybrid PV/DG/B are more economically feasible compared with grid connection, and the best cost-effective option is the one including LF strategy with 10 kW DG. Stand-alone diesel generator produces 119110 kg/year and 117677 kg/year of CO2 respectively for RO-250 and RO-500.

This paper presents a novel soft-switching boost DC-DC converter, which uses an edge-resonant switch capacitor based on the pulse width modulation PWM technique. These converters have high gain voltage due to coupled inductors, which work as a transformer, while the boost converter works as a resonant inductor. Upon turning on, the studied soft switching circuit works at zero-current soft switching (ZCS), and upon turning off, it works at zero-voltage soft switching (ZVS) while using active semiconductor switches. High efficiency and low losses are obtained while using soft switching and auxiliary edge resonance to get a high step-up voltage ratio. A prototype model is implemented in the Power Electronics Laboratory, Assiut University, Egypt. Seventy-two-panel PV modules of 250 W each were used to simulate and execute the setup to examine the proposed boost converter.

This paper identifies the best energy management strategy of hybrid photovoltaic–diesel battery-based water desalination systems in isolated regions using technical, economic and techno–economic criteria. The employed procedures include Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) as tools for the solution. Twelve alternatives, containing three–four energy management strategies; four energy management strategies, load following (LF), cycle charging (CC), combined LF–CC, and predictive strategy; and three different sizes of brackish water reverse osmosis (BWRO) water desalination units, BWRO-150, BWRO-250, and BWRO-500, are investigated with capacity of 150, 250, and 500 m³/day, respectively. Eight attributes comprising different technical and economic metrics are considered during the evaluation procedure. HOMER Pro^® software is utilized to perform the simulation and optimization. The main findings confirmed that the best energy management strategies are predictive strategies and the reverse osmosis (RO) unit’s optimal size is RO-250. For such an option, the annual operating cost and initial costs are $4590 and $78,435, respectively, whereas the cost of energy is $0.156/kWh. The excess energy and unmet loads are 27,532 kWh and 20.3 kWh, respectively. The breakeven grid extension distance and the amount of CO₂ are 6.02 km and 14,289 kg per year, respectively. Compared with CC–RO-150, the amount of CO₂ has been sharply decreased by 61.2%.