Study on Novel Topology of Solar–Wind Hybrid Power Plant Using Photovoltaic Cell Emulating System

Abstract

At the present, the grid-tied solar power system is the most promising as a renewable energy technology for replacing the fossil energy sources. The usage efficiency of the power conditioner system in the grid-tied solar power system is not high because the electricity generation from solar panels depends on the weather. The utilization rate of the power conditioner system can be increased by adding the small scale wind turbine to the existing grid-tied solar power system. We introduced a novel design solution in the previous study to connect the small wind turbine with the power conditioner system of the grid-tied solar power system by emulating technical characteristics of the solar panel in series connection mode. By which, the utilization rate of the power conditioner system has been increased. However, this improved utilization rate of the power conditioner system is not high in the cloudy and rainy days because the voltage of the solar panel changes slightly and the maximum input voltage of the power conditioner system is limited. Therefore, we propose a novel performance enhancement method for solar–wind hybrid power plant using photovoltaic cell emulating system in this research.