Techno-economic assessment of a hybrid onshore wind nearshore–floating PV system for seawater reverse osmosis desalination in Tan-Tan, Morocco

Abstract

The increasing dependence of arid coastal regions on seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination with its high electricity needs is a motivation for the integration of renewable energy sources. The present study analyzes grid-connected wind, nearshore floating photovoltaic (FPV) and hybrid Wind-FPV configurations for a proposed 26,000 m 3 /day SWRO plant in Tan-Tan, Morocco, requiring 31.65 GWh/year at a specific energy consumption of 3.335 kWh/m 3 . Four supply scenarios are compared using hourly simulations based on 2014 meteorological data. Renewable fractions of 62.2% and 41.9% are obtained for the Wind-Grid and FPV-Grid configurations respectively. The selected hybrid configuration (12.30 MW wind + 2.2 MWp FPV) brings the renewable fraction to 65.1% and the grid consumption down to 11.05 GWh/year. Hybridization only modestly smooths power (2.42%) as the system is still wind dominated. Economically, the wind scenario gives the lowest cost of effective electricity supply and LCOW, with 0.732 MAD/kWh and 6.99 MAD/irf. The hybrid scenario shows 0.783 MAD/kWh and 7.16 MAD/rtf. The hybrid configuration provides the largest operational CO 2 reduction, avoiding 12.77 kt CO2/year. The results show that Wind-FPV hybridization primarily improves direct renewable utilization and reduces grid dependence, while its economic performance depends strongly on the adopted nearshore FPV cost assumption.