Converting existing Internal Combustion Generator (ICG) systems into HESs in standalone applications

Graphical abstract: - Highlights: • Obtained Pareto fronts of LEC, power supply reliability (PSR) and ICC/GHG emission. • Pareto surface was observed for smaller ICGs when considering LEC–PSR–GHG. • Shape of the LEC–PSR–ICC Pareto front gradually changes with ICG capacity. • Importance of multi-criterion decision-making after multi objective optimization. - Abstract: Expanding existing Internal Combustion Generator (ICG) systems by combining renewable energy sources is getting popular due to global concern on emission of green house gases (GHG) and increasing fossil fuel costs. Life cycle cost, initial capital cost (ICC), power supply reliability of the system, and GHG emission by ICG are factors to be considered in this process. Pareto front of Levelized Energy Cost (LEC)–Unmet Load Fraction (ULF)–GHG emission was taken in this study for four different expansion scenarios. Furthermore, Pareto front of ICC–LE–ULF was taken for three different expansion scenarios in order to analyze the impact of renewable energy integration. The results clearly depict that characteristics of the Pareto front varies with the scale of expansion and objectives taken for the optimization. A detailed analysis was conducted for a scale up problem with a 4 kVA ICG by using the Pareto fronts obtained