Abstract
Integrating different energy resources, like solar PV, wind, and hydro is used to ensure reliable power to the rural community loads. Hybrid power system offers sufficient power supply for the rural villages by providing alternative supply for intermittent nature of renewable energy resource. Hence, intermittency of renewable energy resources is a challenge to electrify the rural community in a sustainable manner with the above sources. Thus, efficient resources management is a reasonable choice for intermittent renewable energy resources. The majority of rural villages in Ethiopia are suffering from lack of electricity. This causes deforestation, travel for long distance to fetch water, and no good social services, like clinic and schools, sufficiently. Therefore, the objective of this study was to maximize reliability of power supply by renewable energy sources. Data on wind speed and solar radiation are obtained from the NASA surface meteorological agency. While hydro data are obtained from physical measurements. Different configuration options are considered by Homer software to find the optimal configuration of hybrid system. The optimal configuration system is selected and hybrid components are sized. The optimal hybrid system consists of solar PV, wind, and hydro to supply a community load with a share of 13%, 52%, and 35% respectively. The fuzzy logic controller is designed to manage the intermittent nature of energies. Hence, the demand and energy sources are unpredictable; intelligent control system is important to manage the system accordingly. The control system is designed in MATALAB software. The result obtained from resource combination shows demand and supply are balanced. From the Twelve probabilistic combinations of demand and energy sources, one of the combinations shows that when 7.5 kW is demanded, the power generated/output from hybrid system is 10 kW which is greater than demand. To satisfy 7.5 kW demand control system takes 4.25 kW, 2.75 kW, and 1.08 kW share from wind, hydro, and solar sources respectively. The fuzzy logic control system is designed, to monitor the resource availability and load demand. This controller was managing the demand and the available resources according to the rule.
Highlights
The substantially to rapid economic growth and industrialization depends upon the electrical energy
This study addresses the energy management, without considering the optimal hybrid power system configuration in Homer
For balancing demand and resources the power generated from each resource (8.58 kW wind, 2.15 kW solar, and 5.775 kW hydro) should not be less than the maximum load (15 kW)
Summary
The substantially to rapid economic growth and industrialization depends upon the electrical energy. To ensure the sustainable development, having reliable, secure and affordable energy service to the community is important (Ozcan and Ozturk 2019; Sultan and Alkhateeb 2019). In Ethiopia, rural community uses fossil fuel and wood for their domestic power demand. Using these energy sources leads to climate changes, environmental changes, and health-related problems. The renewable energy resources interest is increased due to environmental friendliness, availability, and low running cost (Østergaard et al 2020; Gürel et al 2020). Integrating different energy resources, like solar PV, wind, and hydro is used to ensure reliable power to the rural community loads. Hybrid power system offers sufficient power supply for the rural villages by providing alternative supply
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