This research aims to design, model development, control and experimental validation of a hybrid renewable (solar/wind/fuel-cell/pressure retarded osmosis) energy system. One of the main challenges of this type of system is to develop an appropriate control methodology to ensure the extraction of maximum power from the system. To this end, nonlinear fuzzy-PID and model predictive control (MPC) mechanisms will be investigated. To optimise control parameters, various biologically inspired optimisation algorithms will be also used to enhance controller performance.