Instantaneous reference current scheme based power management system for a solar/wind/fuel cell fed hybrid power supply

This paper proposes a new power conditioner topology with an intelligent power management controller that integrates multiple renewable energy sources such as solar energy, wind energy and fuel cell energy with battery backup to make the best use of their operating characteristics and obtain better reliability than that could be obtained by single renewable energy based power supply. The proposed embedded controller is programmed for maintaining a constant voltage at PCC, maximum power point tracking for solar PV panel and WTG and power flow control by regulating the reference currents of the controller in an instantaneous basis based on the power delivered by the sources and load demand. The instantaneous variation in reference currents of the controller enhances the controller response as it accommodates the effect of continuously varying solar insolation and wind speed in the power management. The power conditioner uses a battery bank with an embedded controller based online SOC estimation and battery charging system which effectively sink or source the input power based on the load demand. The simulation results of the proposed power management system for a standalone solar/WTG/fuel cell fed hybrid power supply with real time solar radiation and wind velocity data collected from solar centre, KEC for a sporadically varying load demand is presented in this paper and the results are encouraging in reliability and stability perspective. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.