Performance Evaluation of Wind-Solar Hybrid System in Indian Context

Abstract

Renewable energy is an abundant and clean source of energy, which is also economical nowadays. To utilize these energies, current technologies are still not developed enough and we still have to greatly depend on non-renewable energies for meeting the baseload demand. Development of new methods for renewable energy generation, storage and distribution and improvements in the existing technologies is essential to meet the increasing energy demand. Keeping this in mind, the present investigation was carried out on the wind-solar hybrid system of 15 kW capacity out of which 5.4 kW is solar energy based and 9.6 kW is wind energy based. The system was monitored and data was analyzed throughout the year for performance evaluation of the system. The energy generation data was used to compare the actual performance of the hybrid system against the expected performance with respect to the demand. It was observed that the performance of the solar PV system was better than the expected output and the performance of the wind turbine was not as per the expectations in most of the months due to low wind speed. However, it was observed that the energy generation from the solar modules and wind turbines was complementary to each other. The poor performance of the solar modules during the rainy season was compensated by the maximum power generation by the wind turbine. The overall energy generation from the wind-solar hybrid system was stable throughout the year which was otherwise not possible from the independent solar or wind installations.