Fuzzy logic controller for solar power smoothing based on controlled battery energy storage and varying low pass filter

Abstract

Matching of the colossal energy demand with carbon-free resources originates a global challenge to produce and innovate advanced energy technologies that generate clean and friendly energy supplies without threatening our environment. Nevertheless, with the increase in the penetration from renewable energy resources like solar and wind farms many technical issues are presented typically; power stability, power quality, and frequency fluctuations. The aforementioned problems stem from the intermittent nature of renewable resources which makes the generated power unpredictable and requires controlling and smoothing before dispatching. Conventionally low pass filter (LPF) is used with a controlled energy storage system to smoothen the fluctuated power due to its simplicity, but a delay problem increases with higher values of the filtering the time constant. This study suggests a smoothing controller-based fuzzy logic that determines the value of the filtering time constant based on the present solar power ramp rate to avoid the battery overworking, which results in the predetermined configuration of the LPF. The presented simulation results prove the smoothing performance of the proposed controller and compare its performance to the LPF during clear, normal, and cloudy irradiance profiles.