The optimal sizing and tilting of a hybrid photovoltaic/battery/diesel generator system are performed in this paper for the remote locations in India, using artificial intelligence techniques (AIT) without the metrological data. Initially, the optimal sizing and tilt angle calculation were done for different cities of India, for low cost and zero load rejection with the available metrological data. Using the latitude, longitude and altitude of any remote location, the optimal size of a hybrid system is found through AIT. The tilt angle for the photovoltaic (PV) array to be installed in any remote location is also predicted to reduce the hourly usage of diesel generator (DG) for all the four seasons and the number of visits for manual tracking is optimized to three per year through this research. The predicted optimal values, using adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and artificial neural network (ANN) are compared with the calculated values. The life cycle cost (LCC) of the optimized hybrid system is compared with the standalone PV as well as the DG system cost to prove its cost effectiveness. The validity of the sizing procedure for different load demand is also proved with loss of load probability (LLP) of 0.0026. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.