Optimal designing of grid-connected microgrid systems for residential and commercial applications in Pakistan

Conventional energy sources (CESs) are currently serving most of the global energy demands, but they will be substantially depleted as moving towards the end of this decade. The generation of electricity from such sources is causing the emission of greenhouse gases that is resulting in deleterious effect on the environment along with changing climatic and energy patterns of the planet. Therefore, the world is heading toward decentralization, and microgrids are playing a key role in this process. The advantages of renewables, which are acknowledged globally as benign, eco-friendly, economical, and inexhaustible resources available worldwide, are to credit for such a massive surge in the utilization of renewable resources in microgrid technology. Despite having an enormous renewable energy potential, Pakistan spends a sizable portion of its budget on energy imports of coal, oil, and liquefied natural gas, however, with good planning, current energy crises might be eliminated or at least mitigated to a greater extent, assuring energy security, economic prosperity, and lower carbon emissions inside the country. This study considers the optimal component planning in a grid-connected microgrid with five objectives to achieve that are to reduce the cost of energy, increase the renewable share, cut greenhouse gas emissions, enhance the reliability of power supply and to make electricity generation sustainable in the long run for the country. Different solar PV capacities are tested against the energy cost, renewable share and emission of greenhouse gases in order to attain the trade-off. The cost of energy is minimized by 92.47%, renewable share rises to 85%, and CO₂ emissions are decreased by 48% for residential application. In the case of commercial application, however, the cost of energy is lowered by 48.52%, the renewable energy share rises to 71.1%, and CO₂ emissions are reduced by 61% through incorporating solar PV into the current power system.