Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Optimal operation of photovoltaic/diesel generator/pumped water

reservoir power system using modified manta ray optimization
Bingzhi Liu a, Zizeng Wang a, Li Feng a, **, Kittisak Jermsittiparsert b, c, d, *
a
School of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, Guangdong, China
b
Institute of Research and Development, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, 550000, Viet Nam
c
Faculty of Information Technology, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, 550000, Viet Nam
d
MBA School, Henan University of Economics and Law, Henan, 450046, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: To fully utilize the renewable energy sources and increase the power system reliability with high
Received 15 July 2020 penetration of renewable energy sources, hybridization with other renewable or nonrenewable sources
Received in revised form as well as energy storage systems is highly recommended. This paper studies a hybrid power system
22 December 2020
consisting of solar panels, a diesel generator, and a pumped water reservoir. In this system, the excess
Accepted 24 December 2020
Available online 29 December 2020
solar energy is used to pump the water into the water storage for later use. When solar energy is not
enough to supply the demand, diesel generation and pumped water reservoir help supply the demand.
Handling editorKathleen Aviso Due to the nonlinear nature of fuel consumption of diesel generator, an optimum amount of power
generated by this unit can lead to cost-saving. This leads to an optimization problem, which is solved by
Keywords: an optimization technique proposed in this paper. The optimization used is named manta ray optimi-
Hybrid renewable energy system zation and is based on the improved version of the manta ray foraging technique. The simulation results
Diesel generator obtained from the proposed technique, the conventional manta ray foraging technique, and other well-
Photovoltaic generation known techniques are compared to the proposed method to prove better performance and robustness of
Manta ray optimization technique
the proposed method. Three scenarios are analyzed here which are associated with high, normal, and
Minimum-cost operation
low solar radiation, which are respectively related to maximum, average, and minimum solar irradiance
Pumped water reservoir
in the studied year. In the case of low solar radiation, optimization is not required as DG is the only
auxiliary generation unit. The fuel consumptions using the proposed optimization technique are aver-
agely 6.14% and 5.96% better in scenarios 1 and 2, respectively. Moreover, the robustness achieved by this
optimization method is 17.94% and 48.41% higher in scenarios 1 and 2, respectively.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction et al., 2019a). However, their flow of energy is inconsistent and

Renewable energy forms have been attracting increasing
attention globally because of their benefit and they see more use
every day (Aghajani and Ghadimi, 2018). Despite fossil fuels, they
do not lead to pollution, greenhouse gas emission, negative envi-
ronmental impacts, ozone hole, etc (Alizadeh et al., 2016). On the
other hand, renewable energy sources will never be depleted
(Akbary et al., 2019). In addition, they are more economical for
providing a remote load with locally and off-grid generation (Cao
* Corresponding author. Institute of Research and Development, Duy Tan Uni-
versity, Da Nang, 550000, Viet Nam.
** Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: fl19860314@126.com (L. Feng), k.jermsittiparsert@gmail.com
(K. Jermsittiparsert).
accurate planning and combination with different energy forms are
essential to increase the reliability of the power systems with high
penetration of renewable energy (Gollou and Ghadimi, 2017). For
instance, using only solar energy, the system will not be powered
during the nights and using wind energy, there will be fluctuation
in generated power (Hamian et al., 2018). Using a group of
renewable sources will cover gaps in the power supply (Cao et al.,
2019b).
There have been many scientific works regarding optimally
operating and planning the combinatorial power system (Nejad
et al., 2019). An off-grid hybrid system of renewable and non-
renewable resources is studied in (Akhtari and Baneshi, 2019) for
a simultaneous supply of power, thermal energy, and hydrogen
(Mirzapour et al., 2019). This system also includes a procedure to
use excess power from renewable sources to generate thermal

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.125733
0959-6526/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733

Nomenclature V1 and V2 Any two values that are being compared ½  

a Weight coefficient ½  
b Weight coefficient ½  
VariableSymbolDescription h Efficiency ½  
A The total surface area of the PV panels ½m2  q0 A random number in the range of [0 1] ½  
c1 Cost parameter (8:013 105 Þ ½L =ðkWÞ2 h qk The value of i  th chaotic generation ½  
c2 Cost parameter (0.180) ½L =kWh r Density of water ½kg =m3 
c3 Cost parameter (0.8102) ½L =h
CTS The capacity of the top storage ½L Abbreviation
CW The volume of the water in the top storage ½L Acronym Description
f ðldworst Þ The worst solution for the OF DG Diesel generation
f ðldbest Þ The best solution for the OF DNS Demand not supplied
g Gravitational acceleration ½m =s2  FU Fuel usage
hB Height of water in the bottom storage ½m FPA Flower pollination algorithm
hT Height of the top storage ½m GO Grasshopper optimization
H The height difference between the top and bottom HRPS Hybrid renewable power system
storages ½m MBO Monarch butterfly optimization
Hf Frictional head loss ½m MMRO Modified manta ray optimization
I Solar irradiation ½kW =m2  MRFO Manta ray foraging optimization
ImpV1 V2 The improvement of V1 over V2 ½   OF Objective function
j A parameter indicating a, b, or c PC Penalization cost
K Max size of the chaotic generation ½   PWR Pumped water reservoir
ldbest A Location with a high density of planktons ½   RBS Radio base station
ldi i  th candidates in the d  th dimension ½   TNPV Total net present value
ldi1 ði 1Þ  th candidates in the d  th dimension ½   WCA Water cycle algorithm
ldrand A random number indicating a location in the
solution space ½   Indices
Ld The lower limit of the d  th dimension ½   DG Diesel generator
P Electrical power ½kW diff The difference between the PV generation and the
Qturb The flow rate of water passing through the turbine demand ½kW
½m3 =s pump The hydro pump in the PWR
Qpump The flow rate of the pump ½m3 =s pump; rated Rated value for hydro pump
r A randomly chosen number in the range of [0 1] solar Solar panel efficiency/power after being converted to
R A random number in the range of [0 1] ½   AC
S Somersault parameter ½   turb The hydro turbine in the PWR
T Max repetition number ½   turb; rated Rated value for hydro turbine
Ud The upper limit of the d  th dimension ½  

energy (Fan et al., 2020). The energy sources in this study are wind
turbines, a boiler, PV panels, and an electrolyzer (Leng et al., 2018).
Their work led to the improvement of renewable fraction up to 35%
and CO2 emission and cost of energy decreases by 10.6% and 7.1%,
respectively (Hosseini Firouz and Ghadimi, 2016). The optimization
used here was aimed at finding the proper size and configuration of
units (Liu et al., 2017). An off-grid hybrid system consisting of solar
panels and a fuel cell is studied from a techno-economic point of
view in (Samy et al., 2019). This system is proposed to supply
electricity to an isolated urban area and remote locations in Egypt.
The total yearly cost is used as an objective function (OF) and the
Flower pollination algorithm (FPA) is used to find an optimum ca-
pacity of solar panels, FC, electrolyzer, and H2 storage tank based on
total net present value (TNPV). The optimization suggested the
utilization of 27 solar panels, 28 fuel cells, 58 electrolyzers, and 37
H2 tanks which resulted in PEE, LPSP, TNPV, and LCOE of 4.68% and
1.52%, 3.244 M$, and 33.4 ¢, respectively. In (Zhang et al., 2019),
hybridization is used for both power generation and optimization.
This paper studied a combination of wind, solar, and hydrogen
energy systems and used harmony search, simulated annealing,
and chaotic search to optimize the size of units. Moreover, weather
forecast data, artificial neural network for ambient temperature,
solar irradiation, and wind speed are used to improve the sizing
optimization precision. The feasibility of this hybrid renewable
power system (HRPS) is analyzed by using the overall life cycle cost
as the main OF. A hybrid system of solar panel, fuel cell, and elec-
trolyzer used in residential desert area is studied in (Ghenai et al.,
2020). This work has considered the impact of dust and tempera-
ture on the efficiency of the solar panels. It is argued here that the
proposed system can reduce the cost with only 0.08% unsupplied
power to demand. The simulations suggest that the proposed sys-
tem has a renewable fraction of 40.2% and a levelized cost of power
of 145$/MW each hour with no carbon emission. Reference
(Hadjaissa et al., 2019) has proposed the use of an evolutionary
optimization technique named water cycle algorithm (WCA) for
multi-objective optimization of a hybrid renewable power system.
This system consists of solar panels, batteries, and fuel cells (Yu
et al., 2019). The optimization controls the scaling gains of input
and output in the fuzzy sliding-mode controller (Yuan et al., 2020).
There are two OFs here, which are maximum PV output and min-
imum difference between the observed voltage of a DC bus and the
reference value. Optimal sizing of a hybrid renewable power system
for an RBS (radio base station) including fuel cells, PV panels, and
batteries is studied in (Bartolucci et al., 2019). This paper studied
the changes in the system performance in a year, taking account of
weather impact. Furthermore, to optimize the size, a multi-
objective optimization algorithm is defined and solved which op-
timizes cost, renewable energy share, and pollution. The study

2
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al.
suggested increasing the PV size and decreasing the battery ca-
pacity can lead to an 80% penetration of renewable energy. The
study was conducted in three scenarios and resulted in average
LCOE and variability of 0.56 $/kWh and 0.11 $/kWh, respectively.
Hybridization of renewable energy sources will improve their
reliability, however, even with a group of renewable sources, there
will be some unsupplied power (Fei et al., 2019). To solve this
problem, utilization of always-ready fossil fuel generation and en-
ergy storage systems are suggested as seen in some of the refer-
ences above (Guo et al., 2020). In this paper, solar energy is used as
the main renewable source since it has the highest availability and
is easy to exploit (Gong and Razmjooy, 2020). The location chosen
to establish the power system is Binhai, Tianjin, China located at
38 420 02.400 N 117 390 14.000 E. The associated meteorological data of
this region is given in given in Fig. 1 (Kansara and Parekh, 2011) for
the year 2019. Three scenarios of solar irradiation are studied in this
work. The day with the highest irradiation is chosen as scenario 1
(high solar irradiation), the averaged irradiation is chosen for sce-
nario 2 (normal irradiation), and the lowest irradiation is chosen for
scenario 3 (low irradiation). It is a coastal area, which has access to
water to be used in the PWR. The map view of this location is
shown in Fig. 2 using the purple star. In times when solar irradia-
tion is not enough to provide the required power, a pumped water
reservoir (PWR) will be used. In off-peak times, the excess power of
PV panels will pump the water into the storage, and in peak times
or other undesirable conditions, the stored water will flow throw a
turbine to generate electricity (Yanda et al., 2020). In case both solar
panels and PWR are unable to meet the demand, the diesel
generator (DG) will be implemented. The proposed HRPS is illus-
trated in Fig. 3. The optimal balance of PV, PWR, and DG with
different utilization costs is a challenging optimization problem.
This is due to the nonlinear behavior of DG and loss of power. The
goal of the paper is to minimize the operation cost, which is real-
ized by determining the optimum share of power obtained from
the PWR and DG in the case of inadequate solar power (Zhang et al.,
2020). The focus here is the technically and economically optimum
operation of the hybrid system. Therefore, the OF is consumed fuel,
and the portion of unmet power supplied by the PWR is the opti-
mization parameter. To increase the system robustness, a penalty
denoting the unsupplied demand is considered.
The main contribution of this paper can be briefly highlighted as
follows:
- A hybrid renewable system is optimized in terms of the system
cost
- A novel optimization method named modified manta ray opti-
mization is proposed
- The proposed method is compared to other well-known opti-
mization methods in the literature
The organization of the paper is explained in the following.
Section 2 explains the modeling of the system and its components
and present the operational strategy. Section 3 proposes and ex-
plains the innovative MMRO technique. The results of the simula-
tions are presented in section 4. Finally, section 5 concludes the
paper.
2. Mathematical modeling
As mentioned earlier, the proposed HRPS here consists of
photovoltaic, PWR, and DG systems. In the following, each
component of this hybrid system is described in detail (Makhdoomi
and Askarzadeh, 2020).
3
Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733
2.1. Pumped water reservoir
This storage system consists of two containers, namely top
storage and bottom storage. In the case of extra power generated by
the PV, the excess power is used to pump the water to the top
storage and in time of insufficient power from the PV, the water in
the top container is released which will flow through a turbine and
generates electricity. Because of its high efficiency and flow rate,
and simple control (Yuan et al., 2019), a centrifugal pump with
variable rotational speed is used in this storage system at the time
of charging. The flow rate ½m3 =s is calculated as follows:
Ppump  hpump
Qpump ¼
 (1)
r  g  H þ Hfp þ hT
where, Ppump is the electrical power input to the pump [W], hpump is
the efficiency of the pump, g is the gravitational acceleration
½m =s2 , r is the density of water ½kg =m3 , H is the height difference
between the top and bottom storages (Wang et al., 2010), Hfpump is
the frictional head loss for pumping that can be calculated using Eq.
(2), and hT is the height of the top storage (Wang et al., 2010).
2
ðH þ lu Þ  Qpump f
Hfpump ¼ 8  (2)
g  p  d5pump
where, f ½  is the friction factor which is calculated using Eq. (5). lu
is the height of upper storage ½m. dturb ½m is a coefficient whose
value is chosen to be 0.5.
For more information regarding the utilized centrifugal pump
see Ref. (Bachus and Custodio, 2003). It is worth mentioning that
the nominal power of the pump and turbines are 30 kW and 40 kW,
respectively. Moreover, the height and volume of the top storage
are 55 m and 4200 m3.
In the case of insufficient solar power, the power yielded by the
turbine is obtained as follows (Tian et al., 2020):


Pturb ¼  r  Hf  H  hB  hturb  Qturb (3)
where, Pturb is the electrical power yielded from the turbine [W], r
and H are explained above, Hfturb is the frictional head loss for
pumping that can be calculated using Eq. (4), hu is the head of water
in the upper storage (Wang et al., 2010), Qturb is the flow rate of
water passing through the turbine ½m3 =s, and hturb is the conver-
sion efficiency of the turbine and generator. For more specific
modeling of the turbine refer to (Tian et al., 2020).
2
H  Qturb f
Hfturb ¼ 8  (4)
g  p  d5turb
where, dturb ½m is a coefficient whose value is given in chosen to be
0.5.
!!2
ε 2:51
f¼  2 log þ (5)
3:7 Re  f 0:5
where, ε ½m is the roughness of the pipe, which is 4545  106 for
the steel pipe used here. dt=p is a variable which is either dturb or
dpump depending on what the friction factor is calculated for and Re
is the Reynolds number.
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733

Fig. 1. The associated meteorological data of Binhai, Tianjin, China. (a) Daily average irradiation and temperature. (b) Hourly irradiation (c) Clearness index.

4
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733

Fig. 2. The map view of the location used for implementation.

Fig. 3. The proposed HRPS.

2.2. Diesel generation voltage, and increase the system reliability when used indepen-
dently. Some parameters must be considered when determining
As mentioned before, the DG is run whenever the PV and PWR the size of the DG which include, but not limited to, fuel usage vs
are unable to supply the demand. It can regulate the frequency and output power equation and the max demand (Bukar et al., 2019). In

5
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al.
the usage case predicted in this paper, the power shortage must be
provided by both PWR and DG in an economically and technically
optimum way. The second-degree polynomial equation of fuel us-
age in terms of power output is as follows:
U ¼ c1  ðPDG Þ2 þ c2  PDG þ c3
In which, PDG is the power generated by the DG and c1 to c3 are
the cost parameters, which are 8:013  105 L=ðkWÞ2 h, 0.180 L/
kWh, and 0.8102 L/h. It should be noted that in this paper, a 60 kW
DG is utilized. The fuel usage equation for the implemented DG is as
follows:
U ¼ 8:013  105  ðPDG Þ2 þ 0:180  PDG þ 0:8102
2.3. Photovoltaic system
Solar power is the main energy source in this hybrid system. The
PV systems are utilized for different uses including off-grid or grid-
connected, fixed or tracking, and in small or large scales (Ahadi
et al., 2016). A PV system consists of solar panels in series and
parallel to provide the required voltage and current, respectively
(Hosseini et al., 2012). A solar panel generates DC voltage which
should then be converted to AC using an inverter (Akbari et al.,
2019). The PV modules used here are SunPower SPR-305-WHT
type (2020). The electrical power obtained from PV panels can be
calculated as follows:
Psolar ¼ I  A  hsolar  hinverter
where, Psolar is the power obtained from the solar panel after being
converted to AC, I denotes the solar irradiation ½kW =m2 , A is the
total surface area of the panels ½m2 , hsolar and hinverter are solar and
inverter efficiencies, which are 18.7% (Makhdoomi and Askarzadeh,
2020) and 90% (Mohamad Izdin Hlal et al., 2019) here, respectively.
Three hundred and thirty PV panels are used each with a surface
area of 1.3 m2, totaling 429 m2 of overall surface area. Moreover, the
PV system used here has a rated power of 320 W.
2.4. The system procedure
At every period (30 min here), the demand and PV power are
compared and if there is generation higher than a specific amount,
It will be allocated to charging the PWR, i.e. the PWR works in
pumping mode. In case the PV generation is not sufficient, the
unsupplied demand must be supplied by the DG and/or PWR. The
solar power, denoted by Psolar is computed in every period, and then
it is compared to demand, denoted by D. The operation mode in this
hybrid system is divided into three modes, which are decided on
based on the relative size of the Psolar and D.
2.4.1. Operation mode 1
In this operation mode, the solar power is higher than the de-
mand, where the excess power is calculated by Pdiff ¼ Psolar 
Pload > 0. The excess power is then used to charge the PWR satis-
fying the operational limits of the PWR.
- To start the pump, the excess power must be higher than the
minimum allowable power of the pump, otherwise, the excess
generation will be dumped. In other words, Pdiff  0:6 
Ppump;rated , where Ppump;rated is the rated power of the pump.
- Moreover, the maximum input power of the pump is also
limited which is 1:2  Ppump;rated . In case Pdiff  1:2  Ppump;rated ,
Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733
the pump will operate in maximum mode and the extra power
will be dumped.
- Another limit is the capacity of the top water storage, which
should not be exceeded. After being filled with water, the pump
will stop and the Pdiff will be dumped.
(6)
2.4.2. Operation mode 2
In this operation mode, Pdiff ¼ Psolar  Pload ¼ 0, which means
that the PV generation is just adequate for the demand and there is
no excess or insufficient generation.
2.4.3. Operation mode 3
(7)
In this operation mode, the solar power is lower than the de-
mand, which means that Pdiff ¼ Psolar  Pload < 0 and the unmet
power must be supplied by the DG and/or PWR. The limits of the
turbine in the PWR must be satisfied in order to operate desirably.
- The output power of the turbine must be between
0:6  Pturb;rated and 1:2  Pturb;rated . If the unmet power is lower
than the specified limit, the DG will supply it, and the PWR will
not operate, otherwise, both PWR and DG will be used to supply
the unmet load. Due to the nonlinear feature of the DG opera-
tion, optimization is needed to specify the share of PWR and DG
in supplying the unmet demand to achieve a cost-effective
operation.
- The top water storage must not be completely depleted and at
least 10% of the storage must be left occupied with water. If the
storage reaches this threshold, the turbine will be turned off and
(8) the DG will operate solely.
The methodology is shown in Fig. 4 for further simplicity.
2.5. System optimization
As mentioned earlier, the objective function here is the mini-
mum cost of the hybrid system operation in a 24-h period. To
conduct more realistic optimization, the demand not supplied
(DNS) is also taken into account for penalization, where DNS ¼ D 
Psolar  Pturb  PDG . To incorporate this in terms of economical
consideration, it is multiplied by a coefficient called penalization
cost (PC). Therefore, the final objective function can be considered
as follows:

X
24 
X
24 
f¼ DNSðtÞ  PC þ FUðtÞ (9)
t¼0 t¼0
Such that the main idea is to minimize this function. Here, f
denotes the objective function, DNSðtÞ and FUðtÞ are the demand
not supplied and the fuel usage at time t.
3. Modified manta optimization technique
Manta rays are fascinating fish from the Chondrichthyes class
and Myliobatiformes order, which are calm and non-venomous,
and have a horizontally flat body. Their food consists of
zooplankton, tiny crustaceans, worms, mollusks, and other small
fish. Although large groups of plankton in open waters attract them,
even when the tide and water flow disperse the planktons, manta
rays are excellent hunters and can still find them and feed on them.
They hunt in groups and close formation so that if a group of
plankton escapes one manta ray, others will catch them. Because of
their hunting method and its exclusivity to them, it has attracted
the attention of many scholars. Ref (Zhao et al., 2020). has sug-
gested an optimization algorithm named manta ray foraging
6
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al.
Fig. 4. The system optimization and methodology flowchart.
optimization (MRFO), which has achieved excellent optimization
results. Here, a modified version of this optimization technique,
named modified manta ray optimization (MMRO), will be proposed
to achieve the optimum percentage of PWR and DG generation in
the time of insufficient solar power. Below, the main conception of
the suggested optimization algorithm is given.
3.1. Chain food search mechanism
The manta rays move toward to area with higher plankton
concentration in this method. From the optimization point of view,
the higher the concentration of planktons, the better position of
manta rays, which does not mean finding the best solution in this
stage, but moving to a location with a higher chance of inclusion of
the best solution. In this method, the candidates (manta rays) move
in head-to-tail formation. The candidates renew their location in
every repetition according to the best location with more plankton
density. The mathematical model of this concept is as follows:
8

 
< ldi ðtÞ þ r  ldbest ðtÞ  xd1 ðtÞ þ a  ldbest ðtÞ  ld1 ðtÞ ;
ldi ðt þ 1Þ ¼

 
: ld ðtÞ þ r  ld ðtÞ  xd ðtÞ þ a  ld ðtÞ  ld ðtÞ ;
i i1 i best i
Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733
1
a ¼ 2r  jlogðrÞj2 (11)
In which, r is a randomly chosen number in the range of [0 1],
ldbest is a location with a high density of planktons, a is the weight
coefficient, and ldi and ldi1 , respectively, denote the i  th and
ði 1Þ  th candidates in the d  th dimension. Further information
can be obtained from (Zhao et al., 2020).
3.2. Cyclone food search mechanism
The manta rays move in a long spiral chain form towards the
plankton after finding their position. In terms of cyclone move-
ment, these hunters move in a spiral form or move towards the
front candidate. The following equation mathematically models
this form of movement:
i¼1
(10)
i ¼ 2; …; N
7
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733

8



< ldbest þ r  ldbest ðtÞ  ld1 ðtÞ þ b  ldbest ðtÞ  ld1 ðtÞ ; i¼1
ldi ðt þ 1Þ ¼


 (12)
: ld þ r  ld ðtÞ  ld ðtÞ þ b  ld ðtÞ  ld ðtÞ ; i ¼ 2; …; N
best i1 i best i

solutions, sometimes it converges prematurely and yields sub-

   optimum results. Two modification procedures are proposed here
T tþ1
b ¼ 2 exp ra   sinð2pri Þ (13) to mitigate this issue. The first is to incorporate a self-adaptive
T weight assignment procedure, which will improve the conver-
Here, b is another weight coefficient, ra is a randomly chosen gence speed. This modification updates the location of the candi-
number in the range of [0 1], and T denotes the max repetition dates to adapt to the randomly chosen values. In the MMRO
number. technique, to balance the universal and local searches, the original
When the manta rays randomly search for the most desirable individuals move with large steps and the steps become smaller in
solution, the location of the prey is considered as the reference the final generation over a local search space. This modification
point. The cyclone food search procedure will enhance the explo- introduces the weighting of food searching pattern to reduce the
difference between the best and the worst answer. The following
equation mathematically models this procedure:

8


< ldi ðtÞ þ S  rb  ldbest  rc  ldi ðtÞ þ ldbest  ldi ðtÞ  t; R > 0:5
ldi ðt þ 1Þ ¼

 (17)
: ld ðtÞ þ S  r  ld  r  ld ðtÞ  ld  xd ðtÞ  t; R  0:5
i b best c i best i

ration power of the algorithm. The following equation mathemat-

ically models this form of movement:

8



< ldrand þ r  ldrand ðtÞ  ld1 ðtÞ þ b  ldrand ðtÞ  ld1 ðtÞ ; i ¼ 1
ldi ðt þ 1Þ ¼


 (14)
: ld þ r  ld ðtÞ  ld ðtÞ þ b  ld ðtÞ  ld ðtÞ ; i ¼ 2; …; N
rand i1 i rand i

8
 !2

 f ldbest

ldrand d
¼L þr  U L d d >
>
(15) >
<
 f ldworst s0
t¼ f ldworst (18)
Here, U d and Ld are the upper and lower limits of the d th >
>
>
:

dimension, and ldrand is a randomly generated number indicating a 1 f ldworst ¼0
location in the solution space.
Here, R is a random number in the range of [0 1]. f ðldworst Þ and
3.3. Somersault food search f ðldbest Þ
are, respectively, the worst and the best answer for the OF.
The next modification is chaos-based, which addresses the local
According to the somersault food search, the plankton location convergence and decreases the calculational burden. It sets
is considered as a pivot, and the candidates somersault to a new pseudo-random parameters with sequence random features which
location in search of the pivot. Therefore, the positions of the is beneficial for the optimization technique (Yang et al., 2007). This
candidates are renewed according to the best location. The
following equation mathematically models this form of movement:


ldi ðt þ 1Þ ¼ ldi ðtÞ þ S  rb  ldbest  rc  ldi ðtÞ ; i ¼ 1; 2; :::; N (16)

Here, rb and rc are two different randomly chosen numbers

between 0 and 1. Moreover, S denotes the somersault parameter,
which is 2 here.

3.4. The proposed MMRO

Although the MRFO technique yields excellent optimization Fig. 5. The pseudo-code of the proposed MMRO.

8
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733

solution error which must be below 105. Almost all of the pa-
rameters of the proposed optimization algorithm are random
except for the number of iterations which is chosen manually.
Based on numerous tests with different iterations in the two sce-
narios, an iteration of 3000 is chosen. The sensitivities of the al-
gorithm to this parameter are shown for both scenarios in Figs. 9
and 13.

3.5. Performance assessment

To assess the performance of the proposed optimization algo-

Fig. 6. The performance assessment of the proposed algorithm based on a real case
study presented in (Xu et al., 2019).
rithm, a comparison is made on a real case study which was con-
ducted in (Xu et al., 2019). The convergence to the solution of the
minimum LCOE is chosen for the comparison. The whole calcula-
tions are run again using MMRO, MRFO, GA, and PSO optimization
algorithms and the results are shown in Fig. 6.
As can be seen, all of the algorithms have large numbers, and the
proposed algorithm has made a proper jump, in iteration 127 has
reached a better solution compared to the other ones, and in iter-
ation 153 has reached its final LCOE value of 0.175 $/kWh which is
the least value among the solution. Therefore, it has the highest
accuracy and has converged to the minimum value. It can also be
seen that the MRFO, PSO, and GA, are placed in the later ranks with
the LCOE values of 0.186 $/kWh, 195 $/kWh, and 0.220 $/kWh,
respectively. It can be concluded that all of the studied algorithms
can optimize the LCOE of the system with different accuracies,
among which the proposed algorithm is the best.

4. Simulation results

Fig. 7. PV generation by high, normal, and low solar radiance and the load.
modification is embedded with logistic mapping and is conducted
on the three random parameters, i.e. ra , rb , and rc , which are
updated using the following equations.
kþ1 ¼ rj; k þ qk  rj; k
rj;new new new
Here, j is equal to a, b, or c. Furthermore, q0 is a randomly chosen
number between 0 and 1, and qk is the value of i th chaotic gen-
eration, which is calculated as follows.
qk ¼ 4qk1  ð1  qk1 Þ k ¼ 1; 2; …; K
where, K is the max size of the chaotic generation.
The improvements and procedures of the MMRO are summa-
rized in the pseudo-code in Fig. 5.
It is worth mentioning that the termination condition is the
The simulations are conducted on a demand curve for a specific
day shown in Fig. 7 (Makhdoomi and Askarzadeh, 2020). In the
simulations, two states are considered for solar radiation intensity
being high and normal in scenarios 1 and 2, respectively. Since
there is no extra generation to be stored in scenario 3 in the PWR, it
does not require optimization and only fuel consumption is
calculated and presented in Table 1. Fig. 7 also shows the PV-
generated power on the days with high, normal, and low solar
(19)
irradiance (Makhdoomi and Askarzadeh, 2020). These inputs are
chosen as examples and can be different for each day.
As seen in this figure, in the case of low solar radiation, there will
be no excess power to use for pumping the water into upper stor-
age, therefore, only DG will help with the power supply which does
(20) not require optimization.
As mentioned before, the final goal of the paper is the optimal
operation of the hybrid system when both DG and PWR are
providing power not supplied by the PV, which is obtained by
minimum fuel consumption by the DG. The simulation results are
compared to those of other methods used in similar fields to

Table 1
The results of 25 runs for each method in each scenario.

Technique Consumed fuel per hour [L/h]

Average Minimum Maximum Improvement in fuel consumption [%] Standard deviation Improvement in Standard deviation [%]

Scenario 1 MMRO 208.720 197.199 220.018 e 3.398 e

MRFO 222.844 210.587 232.458 6.34 3.665 7.29
GO 217.789 200.569 231.896 4.16 4.726 28.1
MBO 226.698 201.369 262.368 7.93 4.165 18.42

Scenario 2 MMRO 234.517 221.698 248.369 e 1.801 e

MRFO 247.536 224.399 255.698 5.26 2.63 31.52
GO 245.369 223.698 265.965 4.42 4.14 56.5
MBO 255.478 234.367 276.398 8.2 4.208 57.2

Scenario 3 261.900 e e e

9
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al.
Fig. 8. The Load, PV, PWR, DG, and excess power generation curves in scenario 1.
Fig. 9. The convergence curve of proposed and comparison methods in scenario 1.
demonstrate its superiority. These methods are conventional
manta ray foraging optimization (MRFO), Grasshopper optimiza-
tion (GO), and monarch butterfly optimization (MBO). Moreover,
the results presented here are averages of 25 runs for each method.
In addition, minimum, maximum, improvement in fuel consump-
tion, standard deviation, and improvement in standard deviation
are presented too. The maximum iteration and population count for
all of the analyzed algorithms are 3000 and 6000, respectively. The
computations have been performed on a core i5-9300H @ 2.8 GHz
with 8 GB of ram using MATLAB 2016b application.
The scenarios are explained in the following. To evaluate the
proposed method in different operation conditions, three scenarios
are presented. Scenario 1 is associated with the high irradiation
condition, scenario 2 is for normal irradiation conditions, and
scenario 3 is associated with low solar radiation. The results of 25
Fig. 10. The sensitivity of the proposed algorithm to the number of iterations in sce-
nario 1.
10
Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733
runs for scenarios 1 and 2 are shown in Table 1, which shows the
average, minimum, maximum, improvement of fuel consumption,
standard deviation, and improvement in standard deviation
calculated from 25 runs. The improvement columns compare the
proposed method to other methods in terms of the average value
and standard deviation, which is generally calculated as follows:
V1  V2
ImpV1 V2 ¼ *100% (21)
V2
where, ImpVa Vb is the improvement of V1 over V2. Moreover, V1 and
V2 are any two values that are being compared. It should also be
noted that the calculations are done for a year, however, to avoid
congestion, the figures shown as results of each scenario are
calculated and shown for a typical day in the studied year.
4.1. Scenario 1
In this scenario, the high solar power input is used for the
simulations. Even when the solar radiation is high, using the DG is
inevitable since the solar off time is long. For instance, the average
value of MMRO in scenario 1 is 208.720 L/h, which is lower than
those of other methods. Moreover, compared to the original MRFO,
the proposed method shows a 6.34% better result. Furthermore, the
proposed method has achieved an average of 6.14% better results
compared to the three comparison methods. To evaluate the reli-
ability of the proposed optimization method, the standard devia-
tion is also presented.
As seen in Table 1, the proposed method has a standard devia-
tion of 3.398, which is lower than other methods. Fig. 8 shows the
demand curve, PV, PWR, DG, and excess generation curves. PV
generation is calculated using Eq. (8). Furthermore, DG and turbine
generations are determined using the MMRO technique.
As seen in Fig. 8, when the PV generation is higher than load, DG
and turbine generations are zero; and whenever the solar and
turbine generations are zero, the DG generation curve is exactly on
the demand curve. Moreover, the DG and turbine supply the load
interchangeability or simultaneously based on the optimization.
The values of the turbines and DG generations in each period is
determined by the optimization algorithm. Moreover, it is worth
mentioning that the unmet demand is zero using the MMRO
technique.
The convergence curve of proposed and comparison methods
are demonstrated in Fig. 9, which are averages of 25 runs. This
figure shows a more consistent solution improvement using the
proposed method compared to those obtained using the other
methods; in other words, the proposed method escapes the local
optimum faster. It also is worth mentioning that the value that the
Fig. 11. The Load, PV, PWR, DG, and excess power generation curves in scenario 2.
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al.
Fig. 12. The convergence curve of proposed and comparison methods in scenario 2.
Fig. 13. The sensitivity of the proposed algorithm to the number of iterations in sce-
nario 2.
Fig. 14. The Load, PV, and DG power generation curves in scenario 3.
Fig. 15. Energy generations of the hybrid system’s components.
11
Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733
proposed method has converged to is smaller than the one other
methods have converged to. Furthermore, to show the sensitivity of
the proposed algorithm to the only controllable parameter, Fig. 10 is
presented for scenario 1.
4.2. Scenario 2
In this scenario, solar power is normal. The outputs of the
simulations using different optimization techniques are shown in
Table 1. As seen in this table, the average value obtained by the
proposed method is 234.517 L/h, which is 4.42%e8.2% better than
those of other methods. The proposed method performs 5.26%
better than its conventional form. Also, the standard deviation of
this method is better than other methods. In addition, the demand
curve, PV, PWR, DG, and excess power generation curves are shown
in Fig. 11. The interrelations of the generation units and demand
curve are the same as the previous scenario. Fig. 12 Shows the
convergence curve of proposed and comparison methods for this
scenario, which are averages of 25 runs. The proposed method
escapes the local optimum faster than the other methods. More-
over, the proposed method yields better optimization.
The sensitivity of the proposed algorithm to the number of it-
erations in this scenario is shown in the figure below.
4.3. Scenario 3
The low and insufficient solar radiation is considered in this
scenario. In this scenario, the only auxiliary power supply unit is
the DG, therefore, it must generate a mandatory amount of power
and not optimization can be done here. The power generated by the
PV panels and DG and the demand for this scenario is shown in
Fig. 14.
Comparing the results of the two scenarios, the proposed
method yields better results in terms of the objective function (fuel
consumption and DNS) and reliability (standard deviation). In other
words, the importance and necessity of using this method increase
as the solar radiation decreases (i.e. the situation degrades).
Moreover, the results of the proposed method are always better
than other methods in any term, i.e. minimum, maximum, average,
and standard deviation. The energy generated by the units and
consumed by loads is shown in Fig. 15. As seen here, when solar
energy is high or medium, excess energy will be generated because,
in these conditions, peak solar energy is higher than the demand
for a period. However, in a low-solar-energy condition, the sum of
generated power is equal to consumption, and no excess energy is
generated due to the same reason. Moreover, as solar energy de-
creases, even though more energy is needed from PWR and DG, the
amount of power generated by PWR decreases, and DG-generated
power increases. This is rational because lower solar energy
means less stored power for PWR.
5. Conclusion and future works
A hybrid renewable energy system is proposed and economi-
cally optimized in this paper, which includes a photovoltaic system,
a diesel generator, and a pumped water reservoir. The optimization
is conducted to tackle the challenge of determining the share of
PWR and DG in supplying demand unmet by PV, which is due to the
nonlinearity of DG fuel consumption in terms of power generation.
Three scenarios are considered in this work, which are based on
high (maximum), normal (average), and low (minimum) solar ra-
diation, and the optimization is conducted only on scenarios 1 and
2 due to the fact that scenario 3 cannot be optimized. The proposed
technique for solving this complex problem is modified manta ray
optimization (MMRO) which is the modified version of the original
B. Liu, Z. Wang, L. Feng et al.
manta ray foraging optimization problem and has mitigated the
problems of the conventional version. To show its superiority, the
proposed method is implemented in the case study presented in
and it is compared to MRFO, PSO, and GA. Implanting on the hybrid
power system here, the proposed method is also compared to
MRFO, GO, and MBO optimization methods in terms of resulted
cost and robustness of the method. The simulation results shown in
Table 1, suggest that the proposed method has better performance
in terms of both cost and robustness, which makes it necessary in
real-world implementation of a hybrid power system with non-
linearity. In the two scenarios, the average improvements ach-
ieved by the proposed method over the comparison methods are
6.14% and 5.96% respectively, for scenarios 1 and 2. Furthermore,
the standard deviation of the proposed method, whose lower value
indicates the higher robustness of the optimization method in the
25 runs, is the lowest in both scenarios which proves the higher
robustness of the proposed method. As seen in this table, the
average improvements in robustness achieved by the proposed
method over the comparison methods are 17.94% and 48.41%,
respectively, in scenarios 1 and 2. In this paper, although the diesel
generator used as the auxiliary power generation source has very
high reliability compared to renewable resources, can increase the
efficiency of the renewable power system, and is an essential
addition, it is based on fossil fuel and the system incorporating this
system has still some environmental impacts. Therefore, the addi-
tion of a fuel cell can be considered in future work to benefit from
zero environmental impact of the fuel cell and high reliability of DG
when needed. As another form of renewable generation, a wind
turbine can also be used in place of DG. Adding a battery to the
system can also be considered for fast response to load or genera-
tion change especially when the wind turbine has replaced the DG.
The system model can also be improved by considering the techno-
economic analysis of the system component. The techno-economic
analysis can also be used to find the best configuration of genera-
tion and storage components to find the best one for any location
and use cases with different meteorological and economic condi-
tions. Generally, This study can be ued for providing greener energy
for the similar areas and also to supply the required energy espe-
cially in the rural areas. The future work will be about improving
the proposed system with an optimal expert-based system for
improving the system sensitivity.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Bingzhi Liu: Conceptualization, Data curation, Writing - original
draft, Writing - review & editing. Zizeng Wang: Conceptualization,
Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Li
Feng: Conceptualization, Data curation, Writing - original draft,
Writing - review & editing. Kittisak Jermsittiparsert: Conceptu-
alization, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review &
editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the financial support provided by
the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51908211)
and Scientific research project of Hunan Education Department
(No.18C0545).
12
Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125733
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