Optimal Configuration of Hybrid Solar-Wind Distributed Generation Capacity in a Grid-Connected Microgrid

Shujun Liu 1, Zaijun Wu1, Xiaobo Dou1,

1. School of Electrical Engineering Southeast University Nanjing, P. R. China liushujunmail@163.com

Bo Zhao2, Shanglin Zhao3 Chunjun Sun4

2. ZheJiang Electric Power Company, Hangzhou, P. R. China 3. China Electric Power Research Institute Nanjing, P. R. China 4. China Energy Engineering Group Co., Ltd Nanjing, P. R. China

AbstractReasonably selecting the capacity of different types of DGs is the key element to guarantee that microgrid system can operate economically and reliably. Firstly a grid-connected hybrid wind/solar/storage micro-grid system is constructed and the output models of various distributed generations are built. On the basis of correction of wind speed and atmospheric density, the power of wind turbine is predicted by linear interpolation. The output of the photovoltaic generation system is calculated by using the Hay, Davies, Klucher and Reindl model(HDKR model).In order to determine the amount of energy that can be absorbed by or withdrawn from the battery bank each time step, this paper uses the Kinetic battery model. Then considering tax collection of greenhouse gas emission and reliability of the system, an optimal configuration design method is proposed, taking minimizing the whole life cycle cost of the system as the optimization objective. Finally, based on the weather conditions in Yantai city, a simulation analysis is performed, the optimal configuration scheme meeting the load is given. According to Chinese meteorological conditions, a sensitivity analysis of the wind speed and solar resource is given and optimal results are obtained on different conditions. The results are conducive to Chinese planning and design work of the micro-grid. Index Terms--Grid Connected Hybrid System, Simulation, Optimization, HOMER

guaranteeing the reliability of power supply. At present, there is no research about the software of microgrid planning and design basically in our country. HOMER is a simulation tool developed by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to assist in the planning and design of renewable energy based on microgrids. It aims to optimize hybrid systems that consist of low-power renewable energy resources generation system and conventional energy resources generation system. This paper takes typical microgrid in Yantai Shandong province as an example. It introduces the electrical load and the design of hybrid system of wind turbine, light and storage. Besides, it aims to minimize equipment investment and operation costs as well as establish optimum configuration. Then this paper presents recommendations of optimize capacity of wind turbine, photovoltaic and storage in microgrid, according to the Chinese meteorological conditions I. MODELLING OF THE HYBRID PV/WIND SYSTEM
COMPONENTS

A. Modelling of Wind Turbine [1] In general, the wind speed data refers to the wind speed at the altitude of 10 meters instead of that at the altitude of fan tower. Therefore, the wind speed needs revising as:

INTRODUCTION With the increasingly serious energy and environmental problems, distributed generation that includes renewable energy sources arouses wide concern. Although it is clean and renewable, the high cost of stand-alone access and the difficulty to control become bottleneck of combining to the grid. Microgrid shows us the way to solve the problem of combining to the grid of distributed generation. As the microgrid pilot project has been constructed and put into operation everywhere, technical problems of microgrid control are being solved gradually. Therefore, how to plan and design capacity allocation of distributed generation in microgrid reasonably and effectively needs to be solved on the basis of
The research is financially supported by National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (No. 2011AA05A105) ,Project Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (51177015); Project Support by Department of Science and Technology of Jiangsu Province (BY2010142).

Vhub Z = ( hub ) Vanem Z anem

Which Vhub

(1)

is wind speed at the hub height of the wind turbine, Vanem is wind speed at anemometer height, Z hub the hub height of the wind turbine, Z anem is the anemometer height, is the power law exponent, normally 1/7.
HOMER uses linear interpolation to obtain output power of wind driven generator. It refers to

978-1-4673-4896-6/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

P 1 P 0 P0 + V V 1 P2 P 1 P 1 +V V P = 2 V1 W Pn Pn 1 Pn 1 + V V V n n 1

0 < V < V1 V1 < V < V2  Vn 1 < V < Vn

(2)

kT 0.22 1.0 0.09kT 2 Id 0.9511 0.1604kT + 4.388kT = I 16.638kT 3 +12.336kT 4 0.22 < kT 0.8 kT > 0.8 0.165

(6)

According to aerodynamics model, the lower air density is, the less kinetic energy blade absorbs, which leads to diminish generated power of fan. Generally power curve of fan is that at standard air density. This paper uses the following methods to modify actual generated power of fan. On the basis of ideal gas equation, regardless of the influence of aqueous vapor, the follow equation can be obtained.

Which KT is clearness index, can be define as KT = I / I o , I o is the average extraterrestrial horizontal radiation, which can be seen from references [3]. C. Modelling of Energy storage system [4] Among the technology of present energy storage, lead-acid battery is the most mature one. It is the most widely used energy storage element. The thesis, taking lead-acid battery as example, makes analysis with Kinetic battery model. At any moment; the energy of the battery is as follows
Q1 (t + 1) = Q1 (t )e k t + (Q(t ) kc P(t ))(1 e k t ) k P(t )c(k t 1 + e k t ) + k

r =

T0 Bz = (1 ) g / RB ( ) T0 T0 Bz 0

(3)

(7)

Therefore, the actual output power of wind turbine is

P W = P W * r = P W * (1
[2]

T0 Bz g / RB ) ( ) T0 T0 Bz

(4)

Q2 (t + 1) = Q2 (t )e k t + Q(t )(1 c)(1 e k t ) + P(t )(1 c)(k t 1 + e k t ) k

(8)

B. Modelling of photovoltaic This paper adopts HDKR model (the Hay, Davies, Klucher and Reindl model) to obtain solar radiation of inclined plane of solar energy collection board. Formula is as following.

IT = ( I b + I d Ai ) Rb + I d (1 Ai )(

1 + cos ) 2

Which Q1 (t + 1) and Q1 (t ) are the available energy of the storage battery at the moment of t+1 and t respectively, Q2 (t + 1) and Q2 (t ) are the bound energy of the storage battery at the moment of t+1 and t respectively, k is the battery rate constant (h-1), c is the battery capacity ratio, P(t ) is the power into (positive) or out of (negative) the battery bank at the moment of t. II. ECONOMICAL MODEL

1 cos * 1 + f sin 3 ( ) + I g ( ) 2 2

(5)

Which IT is the global solar radiation incident on the PV array, Rb = cos / cos z is the ratio of beam radiation on the tilted surface to beam radiation on the horizontal surface, Ai = I b / I o is the anisotropy index, Ib is the beam radiation, I d is the diffuse radiation, g is the ground reflectance. The global solar radiation consists of beam and diffuse radiation, I = I b + I d . Generally, the data of solar radiation we obtain is the amount of global horizontal solar radiation on the Earth's surface. Therefore, how to decompose it into beam and diffuse radiation becomes the key point. According to Erbs relevance, the relation between diffuse radiation and global solar radiation is as the following.

HOMER optimizes various configuration schemes by means of comparing the current value of the equivalent annual value of projects total cost during its service life. The service life of every constitutional unit in system is different. Therefore, in the calculation of cost, the expenditure cost created by the alternation among each unit must be taken into consideration. The cost of each unit includes initial cost, alternative cost and operation and maintenance cost. The thesis evaluates the equivalent annual value of the alternative cost among each unit with the use of the equation below:

Carep = Crep * frep * SFF(i, R comp ) S * SFF(i, R proj )

Which

(9)

S = Crep *

Rcomp ( R proj Rrep ) Rcomp

(11)

CRF (i, R proj ) / CRF (i, Rrep ) f rep = 0 i SFF (i, N ) = (1 + i ) N 1

Rrep > 0 Rrep = 0

(10) (12)

Carep

i(1 + i) N (13) (1 + i) N 1 is annualized replacement cost, Crep is replacement cost CRF (i, N ) =

of the component, i is Annual real interest rate, R comp is lifetime of the component, R proj is project lifetime,INT() is the integer function. III. RELIABILITY MODEL

Because of the uncertainty of wind speed and solar radiation, the output of wind turbines and photovoltaics are also nondeterministic. Therefore, the planning and design of microgrid must take the reliability of its power supply into account. The Loss of Power Supply Probability (LPSP) refers to the ratio of the loss of power supply and the electricity demand of the total load when the power supply of the system is insufficient. Taking no account of operating reserve, the loss of load means that the generating capacity can not meet the load demand of the system. To reflect the variation of energy at any moment, the degree of unbalance of energy within time quantum t is defined as:

Figure 1. Microgrid structure diagram

B. System load The size and type of load are the foundation and basis of microgrid design. The thesis, taking residential electricity load as example, makes a planning and design of the microgrid system. Considering that the microgrid system is capable of ensuring reliable power supply, the daily load designed by this system is 970kWh. Typical daily load is shown as follows in Figure 2:

W (t ) = Ew (t ) + E pv (t ) + Eb (t ) El (t )

(14)

Which Ew (t ) is the electric production of wind turbines, E pv (t ) is the electric energy production of photovoltaics, Eb (t ) is the available energy of storage battery, El (t ) is total electric load. When W (t ) is below zero, it means that power load is in shortage. Assume that LPS (t ) = W (t ) , Hence, the Loss of Power Supply Probability can be calculated as follows:
8760

Figure 2.

Typical daily load diagram

LPSP =

LPS (t )
t =1 8760 t =1

(15)

(t )

C. Resource Data of Wind and Solar The paper chooses Yantai area as the research object of wind turbines, photovoltaic and storage microgrid system. To get the resource data of wind, solar in this area, the thesis uses RET Screen to obtain the monthly averages of wind speed and solar radiation. The specific data is as Follows:

IV.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. System structure Microgrid usually contains integrated small power distribution units including distributed power supply, load, storage, energy conversion device, etc. For a large power grid, microgrid is equivalent to a controllable unit, which solves the problem of large-scale grid-connected of clean energy. Utilizing the complementarity between wind and solar, the thesis establishes hybrid system of Wind turbines, photovoltaic and storage. The specific structure diagram is shown in Figure 1 as follows:

Figure 3. Monthly average wind speed

TABLE II. THE COST PARAMETERS OF EACH UNIT Greenhouse gases Emissions of grid power (g/kWh) Emissions penalties ($/t) CO2 990 2.875 SO2 2.74 125 NOX 1.34 250

Figure 4. Monthly average radiation

E. Results and Analysis HOMER software finds out the optimal economic plan after the comparison of a limited number of design plans. System reliability is evaluated through calculation of power balance for 8760h all the year round. In the thesis the simulation results of microgrid system in Yantai area are shown in the following table:
TABLE III. OPTIMAL CONFIGURATION OF MICROGRID SYSTEM Project PV(kW) Wind turbines(kW) Battery(Ah) Converter(kW) Initial capital($) Total NPC($) COE($/kWh) Renewable fraction Optimal Results 42 2100 575000 100 935000 1349201 0.224 0.74

D. Economic Parameters The selection of the various components cost in microgrid is of great impact on system configuration. Therefore, Presimulation must be defined in advance [5]. The common photovoltaic cells are mostly installed due south on the roof in city. The angle of photovoltaic cells is 37and the derating factor is 90%. When came to the type selection, the low power Wind turbine of Generic 10kW is chosen due to the selected load being relatively low, which is easy to install and use in the city. For this study the battery hoppecke 20 OPzs 2500 has been used. A converter has been required, the efficiency of which is 90% when converting DC electricity to AC electricity, and 85% when converting AC electricity to DC electricity. When the microgrid autonomous power supply is insufficient, power supply can be purchased from the external power grid. Electricity price adopts peakvalley price mechanism. That is, on-peak demand begins from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm and electricity price for this period is 0.088$/kWh. For the rest period, the electricity price is 0.056$/kWh.
TABLE I. THE COST PARAMETERS OF EACH UNIT Type Photovoltaic Wind turbine Battery Converter Initial cost 7000 10000 1500 1000

alternative cost 7000 10000 1500 1000

maintenance cost /year

The system needs to absorb power of grid in order to maintain reliable operation of the whole microgrid. Figure 5 shows power purchase situation of microgrid from the grid. When the microgird is operated in island mode, part of the load should be cut off to ensure the reliable power supply of sensitive loads.

10 200 10 10

So far, the generating cost of distributed power supply is generally higher than electricity price of grid. In order to ensure the proportion of clean energy in microgrid, the upper limit of power that absorbed from the grid is set as 30kW and the minimum renewable fraction in simulation is 50%. In addition, in response to the national energy saving scheme, greenhouse gas emissions will be punished. During the grids power generation, greenhouse gas emissions and the corresponding charging standard are shown in the following table [6]:

Figure 5. Power purchase diagram of microgrid system

Chinas wind and solar resources are abundant and widely spread. However, there are vast regional differences. Whats more, wind and solar resources play an important role in optimizing configuration of distributed power microgrid. Therefore, the thesis makes a two-dimensional sensitivity analysis on average wind speed and average solar radiation in order to analyze the effects of wind speed and solar radiation

on the optimal proportion. The value area of wind speed and solar radiation are based on the actual situation in China. That is, wind speed varies from 2.5 to 6.0 whereas solar radiation from 2.5 to 5.0. Sensitivity analysis results after the overall consideration of two variables is shown in Figure 6:

which takes power distribution reliability and environmental protection converted expenses into consideration. Whats more, this paper also presented a grid-connected microgrid system construction in Yantai, of which wind power, photovoltaic, batteries and converters for optimal proportions by using HOMER software simulation. On account of wind and solar resources in China, this paper also gives a sensitivity analysis of the average wind speed and solar radiation. Thus, combinations of wind, photovoltaic and storage under a variety of scenery are received. These will have certain guiding significance for the future microgrid planning. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The first author, shujun Liu, would like to acknowledge the funding support received from National High Technology Research and Development of China 863 Program, National Natural Science Foundation of China and Department of Science and Technology of Jiangsu Province, to carry out his research

Figure 6. Integrated sensitivity analysis results

The variation trend of levelized cost of energy on the wind speed and solar radiation can be seen from Figure 6. When the yearly average solar radiation is greater than 3.7kWh/m2/d and wind speed is less than 3m/s, the optimal combination of microgrid system is photovoltaic cells and energy storage system. Moreover, the photovoltaic cells are not suitable when the average wind speed is greater than 6.1m/s and solar radiation is greater than 3.1kWh/m2/d. In other cases, the optimal combination is hybrid solar-wind system with battery storage system. In order to meet the assumption that the capacity of renewable energy is more than non-renewable energy, wind turbines are selected, although the yearly average solar radiation is less than 3.1kWh/m2/d and wind speed is less than 3m/s. Actually, the proportion of renewable energy of a real project can be adjusted appropriately, according to the actual situation, such as weather situation, investment, and so on. In other words, if the average wind speed of only 3m/s, it is not feasible to use wind turbine in the real project. V. CONCLUSION

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[1] C.D. Barley, C. B. Winn. Optimal dispatch strategy in remote hybrid power systems. Solar Energy, Vol.58, pp. 165-179,Oct .1996. [2] V.A .Graham, K.G.T. Hollands. A method to generate synthetic hourly solar radiation globally, Solar Energy, Vol.44,pp. 333-341,Jun.1990. [3] M.M. Gilbert. Renewable and Efficient Electric Power Systems. Vol. I, Beijing, 2010, pp.313-359. [4] J .F. Manwell, J. G. McGowan. Lead acid battery storage model for hybrid energy systems, Solar Energy, Vol.50, pp. 399-405, May.1993. [5] A. Demiroren, U. Yilmaz Analysis of change in electric energy cost with using renewable energy sources in Gkceada ,Turkey: An island example. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Vol.14, pp. 323-333, Jan.2010 14:323-333 [6] X. Y. Ma, Y. W. Wu, H. L. Fang, Y. Z. Sun. Optimal Sizing of Hybrid Solar-wind Distributed Generation in an Islanded Microgrid Using Improved Bacterial Foraging Algorithm. Proceedings of the CSEE, Vol.31,pp. 17-25,Sep.2011. [7] J .A. Martinez. Modeling and Characterization of Energy Storage Devices. in Proc. 2011 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting., pp. 1-6. [8] H. Omar, B. Kankar. Optimal planning and design of a renewable energy based supply system for microgrids. Renewable Energy, Vol.45, pp. 7-15,Sep .2012. [9] S. Diaf, D. Diaf, M. Belhamel, M. Haddadi, A. Louche. A methodology for optimal sizing of autonomous hybrid PV/wind system. Energy Policy, Vol.35, pp. 5708-5718, Nov.2012. [10] W. Qi, S.B. Geng, H.S.GAO, W.S.ZHOU, F. Jiang. Design of Hybrid Power System with Solar Energy Based on HOMER Simulation. Electrical Equipment, Vol.8, pp. 27-32, Aug.2011. [11] L. W. Fu, S. X. Wang, Y. W. Zhang, C. F. Zhang, P. T. Dong. Optimal Selection and Configuration of Multi-Types of Distributed Generators in Distribution Network. Power System Technology, Vol.36, pp. 79-84, Jan.2012.

At present, microgrid technology is developing rapidly. Micro-grid project will increase rapidly with the settlement of technical problems. Compared to conventional power planning, more uncertain factors, such as wind speed, solar radiation etc. need considering in terms of micro-network planning and design. This paper did a modeling and analysis of distributed power supplys output power, presented optimal allocation method of distributed power supplys output power,

Appendix:
Question 1: the author proposes that hybrid wind/PV should be used to optimize the system. Simulation is conducted to verify this. However the simulation results show that wind generation output is zero in the optimal solution. Do the authors suggest that wind generation should not be used? The annual average wind speed of Nanjing is only 2.4m/s; its not economical to run wind turbines. Therefore, the capacity of wind generation in the optimal solution is zero. In order to verify the proposed scheme, the authors use the data of another city (Yantai, China) for the simulation. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme reached the expected goal, and the details are listed in the following table.
Project PV(kW) Wind turbines(kW) Battery(Ah) Converter(kW) Initial capital($) Total NPC($) COE($/kWh) Renewable fraction Optimal Results 42 2100 575000 100 935000 1349201 0.224 0.74

The model of the battery is hoppecke 20 OPzs 2500, and the capacity the battery is 575000 Ah. The unit has been added in Economic Parameters of part IV.

Question 2: the efficiency of the converter should be taken into account in the simulation? The efficiency of the converter is set to 90 % (DC->AC) and 85 % (AC->DC) respectively, which has taken in account in the simulation and briefly described in Economic Parameters of part IV. Question 3: in a district with yearly average wind speed of only 3m/s, is it technically feasible to operate a wind turbine? The model of the wind turbine in the simulation is Generic 10kW, the startup speed of which is 3m/s. When annual average wind speed is 3m/s, the capacity factor of wind turbines is only 2.88%. In order to meet the assumption that the capacity of renewable energy is more than non-renewable energy, wind turbines are selected, although the yearly average solar radiation is less than 3.1kWh/m2/d and wind speed is less than 3m/s. Actually, the proportion of renewable energy of a real project can be adjusted appropriately, according to the actual situation, such as weather situation, investment, and so on. In other words, if the average wind speed of only 3m/s, it is not feasible to use wind turbine in the real project Question 4: the optimal solution shows a battery capacity of 300, but no unit is given. In fact units should be provided where necessary.