Standalone Solar Power System Research Articles

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF ENERGY MANAGEMENT CONTROLLER FOR STAND ALONE SOLAR POWER GENERATION SYSTEM USING SOFT COMPUTING TECHNIQUES

This paper presents a viability study of solar renewable power generation system for telecommunication tower applications. Rapid depletion of fossil fuel resources necessitated research on alternative energy sources. A solar power generation using photovoltaic system is one of the reliable alternative energy sources for conventional power generation system. Main objective of this paper is to supply uninterruptible power for telecommunication tower equipments from standalone solar power system with necessitate energy storage unit and a backup power system. The Energy Management Controller is developed using soft computing techniques which monitor the power generation from renewable source, SOC of battery bank continuously. The working rules of the monitoring system have been developed for all seasonal climatic weather conditions in India. It provides uninterrupted power during day time, improves life time of battery and minimized usage of diesel run generator. The whole system is analyzed using MATLAB / Simulink.

Modelling and simulation of standalone solar power systems

In the design of the controllers of hybrid renewable energy system (HRES), the system dynamics and constraints need to be modelled and simulated in conjunction with the controller itself. This paper presents mathematical and equivalent electrical models taking into consideration all system dynamics and constraints for the solar branch of HRES. This branch consists of photovoltaic (PV) array, load and battery connected through a boost-type DC–DC converter. The probabilistic behaviour of the solar irradiance, which intrinsically includes the effect of cloud shading, and the dynamics of the battery are also modelled. The platform developed for dynamic simulation of the solar branch of HRES can be employed for design of DC–DC converter controllers as well as design of energy management systems.

A High-Performance Stand-Alone Solar PV Power System for LED Lighting

This paper presents new improvements and real result of a stand-alone photovoltaic power system for LED lighting that was developed previously. The actual system, during day, charges a lead acid battery using MPPT algorithm for power transfer optimization, and, during night, it supervises battery discharge and controls the current in the power LED array. The improvements are in hardware and software. The hardware was simplified using only one DC/DC converter and only one microcontroller making it more efficient. The system board uses an ATMEL ATTINY861V microcontroller, a single-ended primary inductance converter (SEPIC), and sensors to read input and output voltages and currents to control all system. The software improvements are made in the battery charging algorithm, battery discharging algorithm, and in current control of the power LED array adjusting the light intensity. Moreover, results are presented showing the balance of energy in a period of 24 hours: first results of the MPPT algorithm in bulk battery charge phase and then the over battery charge phase, both in a sunny day. The power LED current control results are also presented showing a very small error. It turns off at 00 : 00 at each day to reduce the waste of energy. Finally, the balance of energy is studied and presented to help the right projection of the PV power panel needed and the necessary battery capacity.

Maximum power point tracking on stand-alone solar power system: Three-point-weighting method incorporating mid-point tracking

This paper proposes a three-point-weighting method that incorporates mid-point tracking to improve the drawback of the perturbation and observation method and to enhance the efficiency of the three-point-weighting method. A design was simulated with PSIM, followed by hardware tests of a stand-alone solar power system using real-time Matlab/Simulink hardware-in-the-loop, for observing the efficiency of the perturbation and observation method, the three-point-weighting method, and the proposed method. It was found that the proposed method tracked better than the three-point-weighting method, and it was capable of improving the deficiency of perturbation and observation method that has difficulty to track from the open-circuit voltage (on the right hand side of the P–V curve) as well as enhancing the precision of the three-point-weighting method in the case of zero-weight.

Acausal Modeling and Simulation of the Standalone Solar Power Systems as Hybrid DAEs

Presented at: SIMS 2012 : The 53rd Scandinavian conference on simulation and modeling, organized by Orkustofnun, Reykjavik 4-6 October, 2012

A Visual Basic-based Tool for Design of Stand-alone Solar Power Systems

Electricity generated by solar energy has been widely applied worldwide; there is a great tendency for the use of stand-alone photovoltaic stations distributed in remote areas due to the known benefits of this source of energy. In Iraq there are other reasons why the use of solar energy so necessary, firstly, appropriate climatic conditions, secondly, delayed electricity supply projects for remote areas.This paper presents the development of a visual basic-based software package that design a stand- alone photovoltaic system, the developed software offers a friendly Graphic User Interface tool to size the system components according to the load requirements and site-specification. The results of the design for the case study are quite in agreement with the analytical method, thus validating the accuracy and precision of the tool.The final outcome of this paper is to prepare a design tool that can be used by those who do not have any engineering or technical background which helps to accept the idea of using solar energy by residents of remote areas.

Energy Conversion Stage Design of Solar Water Pump in a Nanofiltration System

Standalone solar power system provides simple yet flexible solution to certain applications which demand high mobility. This paper introduces the design of a single solar panel powered induction machine-driven water pump system, which is used in an on-board nanofilteration system. The system configuration is evaluated at the first stage to provide high ratio voltage step-up; and complementary PWM and space vector PWM scheme is chosen for dc-dc stage and dc-ac stage respectively; V/F based control scheme is designed and integrated with maximum power point tracking algorithm for the best use of solar panel. The control system is implemented digitally in a TMS320F2812 DSC. Meaningful mode of operation is tested and satisfactory experimental results are collected.

Powering fiber-in-the-loop systems

The advantages and disadvantages of centralized, local, and stand-alone solar (SAS) power systems for powering fiber-in-the-loop systems are discussed. The component costs of the three architectures and their life-cycle costs are estimated. It is shown that, while no single power architecture can be used ubiquitously, centralized power appears to have a cost advantage over local and SAS power for loop lengths less than about 5000 ft. For loops longer than 5000 ft., the optimum power architecture must be decided on a case-by-case basis.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Optimal sizing of stand-alone photovoltaic solar power systems

We examine simple yet accurate analytic procedures for designing optimal stand-alone photovoltaic power generation systems. Solar electricity systems can represent a cost-effective alternative to high cost, conventional, diesel-fired generators, particularly in developing countries where most of the population lives in rural and isolated areas. However, the lack of simple but accurate analytic design tools currently results in either (a) significant, wasteful oversizing or (b) extremely high design costs for one-of-a-kind projects. The analytic solutions discussed here can bring the price of stand-alone photovoltaic systems to economic viabilty at today's hardware and fuel prices, and can also enable local designers in developing countries to design these systems economically and on their own. The analytic models are based on the theory of stochastic processes, and stem from analyses originally developed for analogous water reservoir, queueing and insurance risk problems.

Proposed generalized models for estimating the reliability of a stand-alone solar photovoltaic power system

New mathematical models for the reliability of a stand-alone solar photovoltaic power system (SPV) are proposed in this paper. One of the important reliability indices is the loss-of-load probability (LOLP), so its dependence on the design parameters is modelled. The special role that the battery storage can play to fulfil the desired reliability level (RL) is clearly demonstrated. For a given size of solar cells array (SCA), an econometric model of LOLP is developed to yield the incremental change in the system's total lifetime costs on modifying the LOLP level. The effect of the failure rate of each system component on the SPV reliability level has been estimated and is fully discussed. The behaviour of the SPV reliability level with SCA tilt angle and series-parallel configuration is established under the prevailing working conditions. The significance of the relationship between the preventive maintenance schedule for each of the system components and its reliability is analysed, resulting in a new chart that enables schedules which yield the required system reliability to be planned directly.