Minimizing the Losses and Cost of a Radial Network Connected to DG, PV and Batteries using Firefly Algorithm in Al-Bayda city, Libya

Renewable energy resources were getting the attention in the electricity research fields, many countries invested in the renewable energy to replace the existing generation systems which depends on the fossil fuels resources. This could provide cheap, affordable and clean energy by decreasing the level of CO2 emissions. This research presented a real case study in AL-Bayda city, Libya, focused in decreasing the burden from the main medium voltage electricity network came from Benghazi city as this source could not satisfy the total load in Al-Bayda city, that's why the electricity occasionally died during the week especially in the residential loads. Injecting a photovoltaic (PV) system with batteries beside a diesel generator (DG) is the solution for this research by choosing the optimum operation, the optimum size of the DG and defined the best bus location which could provide the minimum losses and costs using the Firefly Algorithm (FA). Considering the MPPT to get the maximum output power which we could get from the PV system. Forward-backward method used to do the power flow calculation for this radial network which consisted of 71 busses. Collares-Pereira and Rabel statistical method used before by researchers to calculate the hourly solar radiation, and will be implemented it in this research as the provided data is the daily solar radiation. The optimum values of the injected PV, DG and Batteries were 2.0, 2.5 and 0.6 Megawatt respectively.