For small villages in developing countries, local stand-alone power systems are often more cost-effective than utility grid extension. Various combinations of wind turbine generators, photovoltaic arrays, diesel gensets, and batteries-remote hybrid power systems-may be preferred to diesel-only systems. Dispatch strategy is the aspect of control strategy that pertains to energy hows among components. In systems with both batteries and diesel genset(s), dispatch affects the life-cycle cost through both the fuel usage and the battery life. In this study, dispatch strategies are compared using (1) an analysis of cost trade-offs, (2) a simple, quasi-steady-state time-series model, and finally (3) HYBRID2, a more sophisticated stochastic time-series model. An idealized predictive dispatch strategy, based on assumed perfect knowledge of future load and wind conditions, is developed and used as a benchmark in evaluating simple, non-predictive strategies. The results illustrate the nature of the optimal strategy and indicate that one of two simple diesel dispatch strategies-either load-following or full power for a minimum run time-can, in conjunction with the frugal use of stored energy (the Frugal Discharge Strategy), be virtually as cost-effective as the Ideal Predictive Strategy. The optimal choice of these two simple charging strategies is correlated to three dimensionless parameters, yielding a generalized dispatch design chart for an important class of systems.