Determination of the optimum hybrid renewable powergenerating systems for campus buildings of Ardahan university

World energy consumption is increasing due to population growth and increased industrialization. Conventional energy sources cannot meet requirements such as greenhouse gas emissions and high life cycle costs. It is a serious problem that fossil energy sources are both depletable and that the CO2 released during the electrical energy generation process damages the global ozone layer and causes climate changes. For this reason, the use of renewable energy sources has become increasingly popular. Renewable energy sources are suitable alternatives to conventional sources to meet the increasing energy consumption, especially in the electricity sector. In recent years, increasing the use of renewable energy in order to meet the increasing energy demand and fight against global warming has become one of the important goals of countries. Integrating renewable energy resources with conventional fossil-based resources, creates Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems (HYES). The optimal size of HYES equipment must be determined to achieve minimum investment and operating costs and meet technical and emission constraints. In this thesis, hybrid renewable energy systems were designed for the electrification of buildings within the Ardahan University campus and the Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables (HOMER) program was used to optimize their outputs to obtain the best economic and environmental results. The most economical design was the grid-connected system using only solar energy with a cost of $966,000, while the most cost-effective design was the off-grid system consisting of solar energy and hydroelectricity with approximately $0.005/kWh. In terms of the environment, on the contrary, networked systems cause less CO2 emissions, while off-grid systems cause more CO2 emissions.