System power reliability under varying weather conditions and the corresponding system cost are the two main concerns for designing hybrid solar-wind power generation systems. This paper recommends an optimal sizing method to optimize the configurations of a hybrid solar-wind system employing battery banks. Based on a genetic algorithm (GA), which has the ability to attain the global optimum with relative computational simplicity, one optimal sizing method was developed to calculate the optimum system configuration that can achieve the customers required loss of power supply probability (LPSP) with a minimum annualized cost of system (ACS). The decision variables included in the optimization process are the PV module number, wind turbine number, battery number, PV module slope angle and wind turbine installation height. The proposed method has been applied to the analysis of a hybrid system which supplies power for a telecommunication relay station, and good optimization performance has been found. Furthermore, the relationships between system power reliability and system configurations were also given. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.