Optimal Power Management of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems

Abstract

Renewable energy systems are proving to be promising and environment friendly sources of electricity generation, particularly, in countries with inadequate fossil fuel resources. The rapid depletion of fossil fuel resources and increase in demand of electricity has renewed interest in micro-grids (MG) consisting of renewable energy sources (RESs) and storage devices. Incorporating RESs and storage devices into MG could play a vital role in enhancing the reliability of the system. In recent years, RESs such as wind, solar photovoltaic (PV) and biomass based systems are drawing more attention to provide electricity to isolated or energy deficient regions. In this research work, various configurations of hybrid energy system which consists of different RESs have been analyzed in terms of reliability and cost. Detailed mathematical model have been developed and a simplified operational strategy have been presented for different configurations. Initially, a detailed survey have been conducted on optimization method used in hybrid energy systems. Based on the survey, a comparative new meta-heuristic algorithm i.e. artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm has been selected for optimization methods. Further, results obtained by applying ABC algorithm have been compared with other evolutionary technique and software tool. Moreover, a novel voltage droop controller has been proposed for a hybrid system for better power management perspective. Optimal power management of an hybrid energy system is achieved by controlling the charging and discharging rates of individual battery. The efficacy of the proposed controller is verified by considering some critical cases such as the sudden failure of any generating unit. It has been observed that due to sudden failure of any generating unit, proposed controller manages power of the hybrid system by altering charging and discharging rate of the batteries