Design and Implementation of Energy Management System For Small-Scale Hybrid Power Plant

Abstract

This paper explains the energy management system (EMS) to arrange small-scale renewable energy (RE) power plants in one affordable area. RE power plants integrated are sourced from local area such as hydro, biogas, and solar. Hydro power and biogas were built in 2014 with standalone mode, whereas solar power were built in 2015. The main problem is that the energy sources of all existing RE power plants are not continuously available (intermittent). Solar energy is only available during the day. Likewise with water energy sources that was suficient in the rainy season but drastically reduced in the summer. The source of biogas energy is very dependent on the amount of gas content produced from livestock. Therefore an energy system integration arrangement is needed to solve the above problems. The design of integration is done by adjusting the output of each generator source into a DC voltage system to be stored first in the energy storage unit such as batteries. This is due to the simpler and safer arrangement of DC source integration compared to AC source systems. Local grid designed of electrical energy distribution can also be connected with utility grid (on-grid mode) to compensate the intermittent conditions of RE power plants. Finally the design is implemented to maintain energy balance of supply - demand, reduce the grid electricity cost with RE penetration, improve efficiency, security, and reliability of the local grid.