The present study assessed the performances of a brackish water reverse osmosis desalination unit powered by (PV/Wind/Battery) system with hydraulic storage. The hybrid renewable energy system and the reverse osmosis desalination plant were modeled for a specific site in southern Tunisia using real meteorological and water consumption data for 1 year. A total of 8760 simulations were treated under a dynamic simulator coupled to a smart energy management strategy to reach the hourly water load demand. Although the recognized reliability of the hybrid renewable sources compared to one-power source, their design may still critical. Therefore, in this paper, the authors suggest applying the methodology of optimizing the presented unit using an integrated systemic meta-modeling which is built through the design of experiments tool and defined by an equation involving the decision variables of the optimization as its parameters. This equation outlines the objects of the optimum sizing. The selected optimal design of the proposed unit is predicted by the genetic algorithm NSGA-II based on minimizing two objectives in conflict: Embodied energy and hydraulic loss of power supply. The CPU time of the NSGA-II optimization via the meta-model reached only 15 minutes of treatment (with one day to build the design of experiments) compared to the classic optimization via dynamic simulation. The results of the optimum sizing show that it is possible to consider a low water shortage rate (0% ⩽ LPSP-H < 5%) for a marginal variation of embodied energy rate which does not exceed (7%). K E Y W O R D S design of experiments, hybrid renewable energy, meta-model, multi-objective genetic algorithm, optimization, water desalination, water-energy nexus 1 | INTRODUCTION Climate change affects many sides of the environment and severely emphasizes the issue of water scarcity. Indeed, global warming attacks the planet's humidity and the water's underground basins, and if the water management strategies don't change on the behalf of "rescuing water sources", by 2050 the number of environmental refugees will be doubled five times than the actual number. Currently, the world population is about 7.6 billion, reaching 8.6 billion by 2030 and exceeding 9 billion in 2050 whom will be in increasing need of freshwater. 1,2 Desalting, as it was known during World War II while the freshwater supplies were restricted, is likely to be the

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