An assessment of the potential and economic viability of standalone hybrid systems for an off-grid rural community of Sokoto, North-west Nigeria was conducted. A specific electric load profile was developed to suite the community consisting 200 homes, a school and a community health center. The data obtained from the Nigeria Meteorological Department, Oshodi, Lagos (daily mean wind speeds, and daily global solar radiation for 24 years from 1987 to 2010) were used. An assessment of the design that will optimally meet the daily load demand with a loss of load probability (LOLP) of 0.01 was performed, considering 3 stand-alone applications of photovoltaic (PV), wind and diesel, and 3 hybrid designs of wind-PV, wind-diesel, and solar-diesel. The diesel standalone system (DSS) was taken as the basis of comparison as the experimental location has no connection to a distribution network. The HOMER® software optimizing tool was engaged following the feasibility analysis with the RETScreen software. The wind standalone system (WSS) was found to be the optimal means of producing renewable electricity in terms of life cycle cost as well as levelised cost of producing energy at $0.15/(kW·h). This is competitive with grid electricity, which is presently at a cost of approximately $0.09/(kW·h) and 410% better than the conventional DSS at a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of $0.62/kWh. The WSS is proposed for communities around the study site.
This paper presents an experimental analysis of a single pass solar air collector with, and without using baffle fin. The heat transfer coefficient between the absorber plate and air can be considerably increased by using artificial roughness on the bottom plate and under the absorber plate of a solar air heater duct. An experimental study has been conducted to investigate the effect of roughness and operating parameters on heat transfer. The investigation has covered the range of Reynolds number Re from 1259 to 2517 depending on types of the configuration of the solar collectors. Based on the experimental data, values of Nusselt number Nu have been determined for different values of configurations and operating parameters. To determine the enhancement in heat transfer and increment in thermal efficiency, the values of Nusselt have been compared with those of smooth duct under similar flow conditions.
A type of electromagnetic hip-mounted generator (EHG) is proposed to harvest energy from human hip motion to generate electricity. Based on the law of electromagnetic induction, the EHG generator can convert the kinetic power of the thigh swing into electrical energy during walking or running. To demonstrate the feasibility of the present method, a prototype of the EHG has been designed and fabricated. A theoretical analysis has been conducted to interpret the working behavior of this prototype. In addition, the performance of the system has been experimentally tested through a rotary motor and human body motion. When driven by the rotary motor at a rotation speed of 100 r/min, the open-circuit voltage of this prototype is 2.5 V. Further, a maximum open-circuit voltage of approximately 1 V and a maximum output power of 284 μW could be produced respectively when walking with an EHG at a speed of 1.47 m/s. This handy renewable energy technology is promising as a pervasive electricity generation system for a group of wearable or implanted sensors, actuators and mobile electronics.
This paper presents a simultaneous multi-objective optimization of a direct-drive permanent magnet synchronous generator and a three-blade horizontal-axis wind turbine for a large scale wind energy conversion system. Analytical models of the generator and the turbine are used along with the cost model for optimization. Three important characteristics of the system i.e.,the total cost of the generator and blades, the annual energy output and the total mass of generator and blades are chosen as objective functions for a multi-objective optimization. Genetic algorithm (GA) is then employed to optimize the value of eight design parameters including seven generator parameters and a turbine parameter resulting in a set of Pareto optimal solutions. Four optimal solutions are then selected by applying some practical restrictions on the Pareto front. One of these optimal designs is chosen for finite element verification. A circuit-fed coupled time stepping finite element method is then performed to evaluate the no-load and the full load performance analysis of the system including the generator, a rectifier and a resistive load. The results obtained by the finite element analysis (FEA) verify the accuracy of the analytical model and the proposed method.
Unit commitment (UC) problem is one of the most important decision making problems in power system. In this paper the UC problem is solved by considering it as a real time problem by adding stochasticity in the generation side because of wind-thermal co-ordination system as well as stochasticity in the load side by incorporating the randomness of the load. The most important issue that needs to be addressed is the achievement of an economic unit commitment solution after solving UC as a real time problem. This paper proposes a hybrid approach to solve the stochastic unit commitment problem considering the volatile nature of wind and formulating the UC problem as a chance constrained problem in which the load is met with high probability over the entire time period.
In this paper, the effect of rib (circular sectioned) spacing on average Nusselt number and friction factor in an artificially roughened solar air heater (duct aspect ratio, AR= 5:1) is studied by adopting the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. Numerical solutions are obtained using commercial software ANSYS FLUENT v12.1. The computations based on the finite volume method with the semi-implicit method for pressure-linked equations (SIMPLE) algorithm have been conducted. Circular sectioned transverse ribs are applied at the underside of the top of the duct, i.e., on the absorber plate. The rib-height-to-hydraulic diameter ratio (e/D) is 0.042. The rib-pitch-to-rib-height (P/e) ratios studied are 7.14, 10.71, 14.29 and 17.86. For each rib spacing simulations are executed at six different relevant Reynolds numbers from 3800 to 18000. The thermo-hydraulic performance parameter for P/e = 10.71 is found to be the best for the investigated range of parameters at a Reynolds number of 15000.
In this paper, a five-level inverter is used as a shunt active power filter (APF), taking advantages of the multilevel inverter such as low harmonic distortion and reduced switching losses. It is used to compensate reactive power and eliminate harmonics drawn from a thyristor rectifier feeding an inductive load (RL) under distorted voltage conditions. The APF control strategy is based on the use of self-tuning filters (STF) for reference current generation and a fuzzy logic current controller. The use of STF instead of classical extraction filters allows extracting directly the voltage and current fundamental components in the α-β axis without phase locked loop (PLL). The MATLAB fuzzy logic toolbox is used for implementing the fuzzy logic control algorithm. The obtained results show that the proposed shunt APF controller has produced a sinusoidal supply current with low harmonic distortion and in phase with the line voltage.
This paper presents a novel and efficient control scheme for unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) based on three-level neutral point clamped (NPC) inverter using fuzzy logic techniques. The proposed UPQC is capable of mitigating source current harmonics and compensate all voltage disturbances such as voltage sags, swells, unbalances and harmonics. It is designed by the integration of series and shunt active filters (AFs) sharing a common DC bus capacitor. The DC voltage is maintained constant using proportional integral voltage controller. The synchronous reference frame (SRF) theory is used to get the reference signals for shunt active power filters (APFs) and the power reactive theory (p-q theory) for series APFs. The shunt and series APF reference signals derived from the control algorithm and sensed signals are injected in two controllers to generate switching signals. To improve the UPQC capability, fuzzy logic techniques are introduced to control the series APF. The performances of the proposed UPQC system are evaluated in terms of power factor correction, mitigation of voltage or current harmonics and all other voltage disturbances compensation using Matlab-Simulink software and SimPowerSystem toolbox. The simulation results illustrate the performance of the proposed UPQC at the common connection point of the nonlinear load to improve the power energy quality.
This paper presents a single stage transformer-less grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) system with an active and reactive power control. In the absence of active input power, the grid-tied voltage source converter (VSC) is operated in a reactive power generation mode, which powers the control circuitry, and maintains a regulated DC voltage to the VSC. A data-based maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control scheme which performs power quality control at a maximum power by reducing the total harmonic distortion (THD) in grid injected current as per IEEE-519/1547 standards is implemented. A proportional-integral (PI) controller based dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) control scheme is implemented which controls the grid side converter during single-phase to ground fault. The analysis includes the grid current THD along with the corresponding variation of the active and reactive power during the fault condition. The MPPT tracks the actual variable DC link voltage while deriving the maximum power from the solar PV array, and maintains the DC link voltage constant by changing the modulation index of the VSC. Simulation results using Matlab/Simulink are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and validations of the proposed novel MPPT and DVR control systems under different environmental conditions.
The application of a quantum-inspired firefly algorithm was introduced to obtain optimal power quality monitor placement in a power system. The conventional binary firefly algorithm was modified by using quantum principles to attain a faster convergence rate that can improve system performance and to avoid premature convergence. In the optimization process, a multi-objective function was used with the system observability constraint, which is determined via the topological monitor reach area concept. The multi-objective function comprises three functions: number of required monitors, monitor overlapping index, and sag severity index. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by applying the algorithm to an IEEE 118-bus transmission system and by comparing the algorithm with others of its kind.
This paper presents an adaptive neuro fuzzy interference system (ANFIS) based approach to tune the parameters of the static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) with frequent disturbances in load model and power input of a wind-diesel based isolated hybrid power system (IHPS). In literature, proportional integral (PI) based controller constants are optimized for voltage stability in hybrid systems due to the interaction of load disturbances and input power disturbances. These conventional controlling techniques use the integral square error (ISE) criterion with an open loop load model. An ANFIS tuned constants of a STATCOM controller for controlling the reactive power requirement to stabilize the voltage variation is proposed in the paper. Moreover, the interaction between the load and the isolated power system is developed in terms of closed loop load interaction with the system. Furthermore, a comparison of transient responses of IHPS is also presented when the system has only the STATCOM and the static compensation requirement of the induction generator is fulfilled by the fixed capacitor, dynamic compensation requirement, meanwhile, is fulfilled by STATCOM. The model is tested for a 1% step increase in reactive power load demand at t = 0 s and then a sudden change of 3% from the 1% at t = 0.01 s for a 1% step increase in power input at variable wind speed model.