Introduction

Abstract

Nowadays, the most critical issue in the entire world is to meet the permanent growth of the energy demand. Some projections indicate that the global energy demand will almost triple by 2050 as in [1]. Moreover, the rapid depletion of the conventional power sources and their adverse impacts on the future of the planet has necessitated imperative researches for the renewable energy sources as alternative sources of energy. Also, the use of renewable energy sources is desired to improve energy efficiency which is essential to sustainable economic development. Furthermore, the use of renewable energy sources also reduces combustion of fossil fuels and consequent CO₂ emission which is the principal cause of greenhouse effect/global warming [2]. Among the renewable sources of energy, the PV energy and the wind energy have attracted great attention and can be considered as the most promising power technologies to generate the electricity. The PV energy and the wind energy are alternative to each other which will have the actual potential to be integrated with the electrical grid and satisfy the load dilemma to some degree. Also, the wind energy can be captured using large generators to generate great power capacity. Hence, the increased penetration of the wind energy generation systems is evident since it is clean, global, and having minimal operating cost requirements. On the other hand, the PV energy has shown great potential as another promising power technology to generate electricity since it is clean, global, and free and can be harnessed without emission of pollutants. In addition, the distributed PV systems, in contrast to the other renewable energy sources such as wind power generators, are more easily integrated into the electrical utility grids at any point. Therefore, the installation of PV systems has been growing rapidly in the last decades [3]. However, the PV energy and the wind energy are not entirely trustworthy, and they have some demerits such as their unpredictable nature and dependence on the environmental conditions such as the variations of the solar irradiance and the wind speed. Furthermore, the PV energy can be utilized only during the daylight [4]. Both (if used independently) would have to be oversized to make them completely reliable, resulting in a higher total cost. Therefore, a merging of PV energy and wind energy into PV/wind hybrid generating system can attenuate their individual fluctuations, increase overall energy output, and generate more reliable power with higher quality to the electrical grid and the rural areas.