Design and Analysis of Solar PV-Fuel Cell-Battery Based Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES) for Off-Grid Electrification in Rural Areas

Volume 6 Issue 3 May - July 2018

Research Paper

Design and Analysis of Solar PV-Fuel Cell-Battery Based Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES) for Off-Grid Electrification in Rural Areas

Suresh Vendoti*, Muralidhar M. **, Kiranmayi R.***

* Research Scholar, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Ananthapur, Andhra Pradesh, India

** Director and Professor, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering & Technology (Autonomous), Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, India.

*** Professor and Head, Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Ananthapuramu, Andhra Pradesh, India

Vendoti, S., Muralidhar, M., & Kiranmayi, R. (2018). Design and Analysis of Solar Pv-Fuel Cell-Battery Based Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES) for Off-Grid Electrification in Rural Areas. i-manager’s Journal on Instrumentation and Control Engineering, 6(3), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.26634/jic.6.3.14500

Abstract

In the field of research and development, the design of a Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES) has a general approach, however at the same time, there are some difficulties like their consumption and effectiveness. HRES are becoming more popular for standalone applications such as supplying electricity in rural areas due to increase in energy demand. The commonly accessible renewable energy sources in nature are solar, hydro, wind, biomass/biogas, etc., which need innovative technology to produce more amount of useful power from them. Numerous storage techniques can be used in the renewable energy system like compressed air energy storage, pumped hydro storage, hydrogen fuel cells, and flywheels, and so on, but there are certain parameters that should be kept in mind while choosing storage technology: efficiency, cost energy density, and power density. Two storage devices are considered in this paper; both are producing electricity as well as storage. However, while a battery makes electricity from the energy it has stored inside the battery, a fuel cell makes its electricity from fuel in an external fuel tank. This paper deals with modeling and simulation of a Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES) for off-grid electrification of rural areas. It consists of PV array, Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell, and battery along with seven levels Multi-level Inverter (MLI). In this paper, firstly, a dynamic model has been obtained in MATLAB/Simulink environment with the required processing. At the end, the simulation results are presented for the proposed hybrid renewable energy system.