Design and Management of Hybrid Renewable Energy System using RETscreen Software: A Case Study

Abstract

This research clarified a complete design for a renewable microgrid for Al-aroub technical college in Palestine. It consists of various renewable energy systems, including the photovoltaic system, biogas as a primary energy source, a fuel cell generator and a hydrogen storage unit, which can provide electricity to developing economies. As the photoelectric generator and the methane generator provide sufficient electrical energy during the day that covers the requirements of the different loads on the farm, while the excess energy is transferred to the electrolyzer for hydrogen production and storage, and when the load needs more energy, the electric fuel cells are turned on where the hydrogen is obtained from the energy storage unit. An energy management strategy was also proposed in this study as the newly developed network control and management system, and Matlab was chosen to undertake this task. Moreover, the RETscreen Expert software that enables to determine the optimum size that meets the potential demand along with the most feasible economic values and guarantees the highest system reliability. Therefore, three scenarios were proposed and tested, the first being the basic model which was a solar system with traditional batteries, the second a solar system, biogas with batteries, and finally, solar energy, biogas, and fuel cell with hydrogen energy storage unit. Technical analysis of the combined generation was also performed using Power world simulator to obtain constant frequency and voltage (stability conditions). The simulation results clearly show that the hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) consist of PV, bioenergy and small-scale fuel cell generator is a more economical configuration than single renewable energy systems with battery which has a total net cost of $ 473570, levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of 0.157 $/kWh and the lowest CO2 emission model that was 2.1 tons per year.