This paper proposes a methodology for designing a solar-biogas hybrid renewable energy system considering the integration of renewable energy’s variability and its intermittency nature. It also studies for the first time the use of biogas to complement the unreliability of solar energy for a large-scale industry like mining, considering its unique characteristics. The proposed model minimizes annual costs and greenhouse gas emissions, configuring a hybrid renewable system that optimizes its usual economic benefits and defines its topology to improve the environmental impact while ensuring the energy demand. The results indicate that solar energy and biogas are attractive options to supply the electrical requirements of a copper mining process, as they bring economic and environmental benefits. However, a deeper environmental evaluation of the system is needed. The findings also show a trade-off between costs and greenhouse gas emissions; therefore, to promote the minimization of emissions in the system studied, the carbon tax price should be between 100–1,000 USD/ton ${\mathrm{CO}}_2$-eq. Finally, installing the proposed hybrid energy system could help reduce between 30% and 80% of the emissions compared to the actual scenario, and it could reduce around 50% of the total emissions in the next 30 years.

本文提出了一种设计太阳能-沼气混合可再生能源系统的方法，考虑到可再生能源的可变性及其间歇性的整合。考虑到其独特的特性，它还首次研究了利用沼气来补充太阳能对于采矿等大型行业的不可靠性。建议的模型将年度成本和温室气体排放量降至最低，配置混合可再生系统，优化其通常的经济效益并定义其拓扑以改善环境影响，同时确保能源需求。结果表明，太阳能和沼气是满足铜矿开采过程电力需求的有吸引力的选择，因为它们带来了经济和环境效益。然而，需要对该系统进行更深入的环境评估。研究结果还显示了成本和温室气体排放之间的权衡；因此，为了促进所研究系统中的排放最小化，碳税价格应在 100-1,000 美元/吨之间${\mathrm{一氧化碳}}_2$-eq。最后，与实际情况相比，安装拟议的混合能源系统可以帮助减少 30% 到 80% 的排放量，并且可以在未来 30 年内减少约 50% 的总排放量。