OPERATION CONTROL OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES USING FUZZY LOGIC CONTROLLER

Abstract

The utilization of renewable energy resources for the electricity supply in decentralized mode has received considerable attention in recent years due to adverse environmental impacts and high fuel cost associated with conventional energy generation. Economic and geopolitical limitation on global non-renewable energy supplies has also forced many nations, especially the developing countries, to accelerate their use of local renewable energy sources. These resources have enough potential to be the important sources for power generation in the future, because of their environmental, social and economic advantages apart from public support and government incentives. There are however, several barriers preventing renewable energy resources to be competitive with conventional energy sources in the current power scenario, as the energy supply from these renewable energy resources cannot be regulated as per the demand and their integration with grid network is not easy. Uneconomical extension of the grid has led to generation of electric power at the end user facility and has been proved to be cost effective and to an extent efficient. The single technology approach, whether it is Solar Photo Voltaic (SPV) home lighting system, wind, biomass, micro hydro power or any other system cannot adequately meet the demands for long period due to high cost of the system as well as storage subsystem. To overcome these problems, the concept of Integrated Renewable Energy System (IRES) has been propounded in which the energy demands of an isolated area, which is far away from the utility grid, matches with the energy potential of locally available renewable energy resources. This Dissertation presents an extensive review on various issues related to Integration of Renewable Energy Resources i.e. Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) Cells, Micro Hydra Power, Biomass, Biogas, Wind Energy, etc. in association with the National Grid System and Diesel Generators based power generation. These independent renewable energy systems - have become much popular due to increase in the cost of conventional sources of energy and reduction in the prices of Solar PV panels, turbines of Wind and Biomass system. iv The thesis discusses about the issues related to integration configurations, storage options, sizing methodologies and system control. Uncertainties involved in designing an effective Integrated Renewable Energy System (IRES) based power generation system for isolated areas is accounted due to highly dynamic nature of availability of sources and the demand at site. Different methodologies adopted and reported in literature for sizing of the system components are presented. The thesis presents a system in which a common junction is formed of different sources of which the most economical output is attained having the least operating cost. - Intelligent Control Managing System is used for optimizing the Integrated System that prioritizes the sources in the order they should be connected to the load. The outcome of the proposed technique validates that the developed system would be dexterous mechanism yielding a very economical solution on one hand and increase in renewable sources of energy on the other.