Control and design of a remote small hybrid power system

Abstract

If a wind and solar hybrid electrical power system is designed for a remote location, data on wind and solar resources is often quite limited. If available, monthly average data is most often used. However, it is suggested here that higher resolution resource data, such as hourly average data, can have a significant effect on system component sizing. In particular, the anti-correlation of wind and solar availability and also the effects of deferrable loads are studied in simulation using Hybrid2 for a 10 kW wind-solar system with diesel back up. It is shown that diesel fuel use is reduced by 80% compared to the diesel-only based system, and it is also shown that the use of hourly average data results in fewer short-cycling operations of the diesel source and reduced spillage of power as compared to the system designed with monthly average data.