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Document Type

Thesis - University Access Only

Award Date

2014

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department / School

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

First Advisor

David Galipeau

Abstract

The negative impacts of non-renewable energy resources such as global warming and hazardous chemical waste have lead to the development of alternative energy. Among renewable energy sources, photovoltaics is becoming more attractive since it is pollution free and globally available, requires low maintenance, and the price of solar modules is rapidly declining. In developing countries, micro-hydro power plants are one of the largest sources of electric energy. The objective of this thesis was to design a PV/hydro system without energy storage devices and study system dynamics versus variations in photovoltaic output and load variability, for governor controlled and electronic load controlled hydro systems. The stochastic nature of solar irradiance changes the photovoltaic power. In a photovoltaic-hydro system, the change in active power results in a change in speed of the hydro generator which in turn will affect power system frequency. Hybrid photovoltaichydro models with both governor control and electronic load control, for a constant load and for the actual Bhujung load profile, were developed in MATLAB/Simulink to analyze the system frequency with different irradiance profiles. The frequency was significantly affected (4%) during partly (popcorn) cloudy conditions with governor control but not significantly affected (< 0.5%) with electronic load control. Photovoltaichydro systems with electronic load control can provide frequency stability of ± 2% of nominal value, without storage for worst case conditions. Therefore, they can be useful for isolated photovoltaic-hydro power systems. However, photovoltaic-hydro system with governor controlled hydro cannot maintain system frequency within ± 2% for photovoltaic and load variations. Integration of small batteries with solar panels can provide energy to reduce the ramp rate of photovoltaics power and to keep the governor control system frequency stable.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Photovoltaic power generation
Small scale hydropower

Description

Includes bibliographical references (pages 85-88)

Format

application/pdf

Number of Pages

103

Publisher

South Dakota State University

Rights

In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/

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