Integrating weather extremes and desalination flexibility to design a resilient concentrated solar power–photovoltaic–wind system with battery and thermal storage using TRNSYS

Integrating large-scale renewable energy and storage systems is essential for sustainability in hot desert regions. However, resource variability and extreme weather pose operational and economic challenges, emphasizing the need for resilient systems. This study develops a TRNSYS simulation-based multi-objective optimization framework to design a resilient renewable energy system for a community in Saudi Arabia. Its novelty lies in the iterative incorporation of extreme weather derived from 25 years of historical weather data and the leveraging of sector coupling through the operational flexibility of a desalination plant. The optimization identifies optimal capacities for a system combining concentrated solar power, photovoltaic, and wind turbines, coupled with battery and thermal storage. The most economical off-grid configuration yields a life cycle cost of $1.46 billion and a levelized cost of energy of 0.1687 $/kWh with concentrated solar power supplying 96% of the energy (peak load of 86 MW and annual energy consumption of 505 GWh), which avoids 330,900 tonnes of CO 2 emissions per year. This off-grid system, designed to withstand past extreme low solar radiation and high temperature days, requires additional generation and storage capacity, which increases the cost by 19%. Leveraging the desalination plant’s operational flexibility reduces the system’s cost by 2.7% while further enhancing system resilience. The framework provides a practical and adaptable method for designing resilient renewable energy systems in response to variable extreme weather conditions, highlighting the cost of resilience and demonstrating that power coupling with desalination can help mitigate the cost of achieving resilience.