Smart Hybrid Solar Energy System

The problem of inadequate electrical energy is becoming critical in the world today, especially in a developing country such as Pakistan. Year after year, the consumption of electricity increases as more domestic, commercial and industrial appliances are built and installed. This scenario has theref

Project Title

Smart Hybrid Solar Energy System

Project Area of Specialization

Electrical/Electronic Engineering

Project Summary

The problem of inadequate electrical energy is becoming critical in the world today, especially in a developing country such as Pakistan. Year after year, the consumption of electricity increases as more domestic, commercial and industrial appliances are built and installed. This scenario has therefore helped increase the quest for clean and environmentally friendly renewable sources of electrical energy. One of such clean sources is solar which is available in abundance. The solar energy is converted into electrical energy by photovoltaic effect using the solar panels.

This project focuses on utilizing solar energy together with the available grid to share load in a smart way as to reduce the consumption of conventional grid. The solar panels will generate energy making it feasible to be used as a source domestically and commercially. The solar energy will be produced by solar panels as well as stored in batteries in order to use as backup during night. During the sunlight hours the solar energy will be used to share load with the grid as well as store energy in batteries, while at night the grid will charge the batteries as well as share load with the battery backup. When the AC main will fail the inverter section will provide AC power supply which is maintained by storage batteries.

The hybrid energy system is composed of solar panels, a hybrid inverter and storage batteries. The inverter is designed to efficiently utilize maximum energy from panels. Therefore, a MPPT charge controller is used to match the output of panel with the battery voltage to ensure a maximum charge. Due to the variable output of solar panel an intelligent algorithm is applied. This variation is caused by shading, cloudy weather or irradiance factor & temperature change. Moreover, a solar inverter is used before the charge controller to convert DC of panel into AC supply.

Project Objectives

• A hybrid System able to power 800W load.
• To develop a system consisting of solar panels, batteries, grid, inverter, controller for a smart and efficient electrical energy generation system.
• To develop smart energy management system that will reduce grid load and cut billing
• To determine the number of panels and batteries to be used for a given power of load in the system.
• To design hybrid inverter and controller to be used in such system.
• To reduce the cost of electricity by generating electricity using solar energy which occur in abundance.
• To make the energy generation eco-friendly

Project Implementation Method

Initially we are going to arrange series combination of 6 PV array (polycrystalline PV cell) at a specific angle (from which we can attain maximum irradiance from sun). Then the wire from PV array is connected to MPPT charge controller. Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) charge controller is used to track maximum power from PV array. We will use incremental Conductance Algorithm for implementing MPPT. The output of MPPT is connected to battery charger and inverter. Battery charger is used to charge the battery, if battery is fully charged it will disconnect the charger, or if the battery has been drained up to sudden level it will disconnect it from load. The output of battery charger is connected to series combination of two 12V and 85AH battery. This combination of battery can provide 2 hours of backup.  Inverter is used to convert DC voltage to AC voltage. Then we have load sharing section in which energy from Grid, PV cells and battery would be shared to run the load in order to minimize the electric bill. The output of load sharing section is connected to Output load (800W). The whole circuit will then be designed on PCB. The PCB will then be ready for testing phase.

The methodology which we will be using to implement is by designing the whole system and then working on to its hardware implementation. The software designing will be first done properly with evaluation and testing. This software will be then used to design schematic and then selection of actual components with loss calculations. The schematic and software will then be compared to a commercially available system and then it will be analyzed for its shortcomings and then further modified to be realized as a perfect system. This system will then be tried and tested without load, and then with load, and using all possible combinations as mentioned earlier, i.e. with load sharing of Grid + Solar + Battery. The final system will then be taken to be installed at the Final place of testing where the daily day-night process of the system will be tested and finalized.

Benefits of the Project

• Bankers (when grid is off computers of bankers lost their data)
• Hospitals (constant electricity which is essential for the critical patients)
• Commercial industries (Reduce power bills which is very good for the economy of the industry)
• Residential areas (No worries about load shedding)

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

In the area of renewable energy one of the most widely used energy source is solar energy. It has been studied and experimented since the invention of solar cell in the year 1883 by Charles Fritts [1] but with very less efficiency of about 1%. However, in 1940, Russell Shoemaker Ohl discovered the semiconductor solar cell in Bell Labs [2], until in 1954, Bell Labs announced their semiconductor solar panel [3].

In recent history solar energy has been made capable of being used internationally for residential, commercial and industrial energy requirements. This was made possible by continuous research and development in the solar energy area. As an indication of this trend, one of the largest PV solar plants as at 2010 was the 97MW plant in Canada [4] and then later in 2017 a 900MW Solar park in India [5] was installed. Now there have been built intelligent PV systems in the world and are readily available in markets. These systems are now not only able to be used as energy source, but also used for large energy storages as to completely replace the gird supplied AC source, even during no available sunlight for days [6]. Moreover, such systems are developed that work along with grid and battery storage, known as hybrid systems described in [7], such as a 315KW hybrid solar system installed in New Zealand [8]. Therefore, three categories of systems are now available which are namely, On-Grid system, Off-Grid system & Hybrid system [9].

Our Project consists of Hybrid system in which the gird, solar panels as well as batteries are used as a source. These sources are used alternately or in combination. Therefore, making a smart hybrid system which is used to utilize the maximum available renewable energy and minimum usage of conventional source i.e. grid AC supply. A table below describes the configuration and modes of operation of the smart hybrid system.

        

The objective of the system is to harness the maximum amount of electrical energy from the PV solar panel. The efficiency of output power depends on the relationship of irradiance and the solar panel. In order to store energy in batteries and utilize it as a source, the efficiency of output power must be the maximum. Charge controller are used for charging the batteries and they are available in either PWM (pulse-width modulation) or the more efficient MPPT (maximum power point tracking) charge controllers. The intelligence applied in the MPPT algorithm allows it to utilize maximum PV energy.

Grid AC supply

present

present

absent

absent

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Energy

Other Industries

Core Technology

Clean Tech

Other Technologies

Sustainable Development Goals

Affordable and Clean Energy, Responsible Consumption and Production

Required Resources

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