SIMULATION OF A HYBRID SOLAR PV/ DIESEL PLANT WITH BATTERY STORAGE

Gaurav Siwal1

Assistant Professor,

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dronacharya Group of Institutions, Greater Noida 201308,

U.P. ,India.

[email protected] , Mob: +91 7838508365

T. Bothichandar2

Professor

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dronacharya Group of Institutions,Greater Noida 201308, U.P.,India

[email protected], Mob: +91 9891627680

ABSTRACT

Solar PV has witnessed to sharp fall in capital cost in the last few years because of economies of scale and
industrialization of solar power. The capital cost of solar PV has come down to the extent that Levelized Cost of
Electricity (LCOE) is already in the shooting range of grid electricity rates for the commercial and industrial
consumers. India suffers from a perennial power shortage and there is a sizable energy security market in India.
Solar can meet this unmet demand. However, the output of solar PV plant is dependent on the sun light and not
very predictable. In order to make the solar energy firm and more reliable, a commercially viable storage solution
is the need of the hour. It is recognized that large scale storage at the MW scale is still not economically viable. In
view of this a study is undertaken to design, simulate and optimize the size of Solar PV, Battery Storage and diesel
generator with respect to delivered energy cost.

KEYWORDS: LEVELIZED COST, SIZABLE ENERGY, PERENNIAL POWER AND SOLAR PV.

1. INTRODUCTION
India has high solar insolation with regions having 5-6 hours of peak irradiance. In the solar energy sector, some
large projects have been proposed, and a 35,000 km2 area of the Thar Desert has been set aside for solar power
projects, sufficient to generate 700 GW to 2,100 GW. Government of India (GoI) has launched National Solar
Mission, which is one of the eight initiatives under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) is responsible for operationalizing the Solar Mission,
christened as Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM)[1].The objective of the JNNSM is to
establish India as a global leader in solar energy , by creating the policy conditions for its diffusion across the
country as quickly as possible. The immediate aim of the Mission is to focus on setting up an enabling
environment for solar technology penetration in the country both at a centralized and decentralized level. The
first phase (up to 2013) will focus on capturing of the low hanging options in solar thermal l; on promoting off
–grid systems to serve populations without access to commercial energy and modest capacity addition in grid-
based systems. In the second phase, after taking into account the experience of the initial years, capacity will be
aggressively ramped up to create conditions for up scaled and competitive solar energy penetration in the
country. The goal is to have 20 GWP of installed solar capacity by 2022.

Solar energy is available only during the sunshine hours also it is subject to both predictable and unpredictable
intermittencies. Unexpected or expected weather variations can reduce electricity production rapidly. Thus, by
very nature the solar energy is infirm in nature. As the penetration of solar power plants in the overall electricity
generation increases, the infirmness of power is likely to pose bigger challenge and more severe consequences.
It is, therefore, imperative to increase the predictability of energy generation, which can be brought about by
integrating storage systems with the existing solar power plants. Off-grid solar power plants having capacities
in the range of 1-100 KWP already have storage facility. However, the challenge is to scale up to MW level in a
cost-effective manner. There have been some sporadic attempts in the developed world but they are few and far
in between.

1.1 NEED FOR ENERGY STORAGE

Peak Shaving: The reduction of the amount of electricity drawn from a power utility during utility designated
peak time periods. Peak shaving using PV-Storage systems require that the PV provides all required power
above a specified threshold and if PV is not available, there is adequate energy storage to fill the gap.

Load Shifting: Technically, load shifting is similar to peak shaving, but its application is useful to customers
purchasing utility power on the time-of-use (TOU) basis. Many peak loads occur late in the day, after the peak
for PV generation has passed. Storage can be combined with PV to reduce the demand for utility power during
late-day, higher-rate times by charging a storage system with PV generated energy early in the day to support a
load later in the day.

Demand Response: This allows the utility to control selected high-load devices, such as heating, ventilation,
and air conditioning (HVAC) and water heating, in a rolling type of operation during high-demand periods. For
both residential and small commercial customers, using an appropriately sized PV-Storage system should allow
the implementation of demand response strategies with little or no effect on local operations. Control systems
for demand response systems will require at least one-way communications between the PV-storage site and the
utility.

Outage Protection: An important benefit of a PV Storage system is the ability to provide power to the
residential or small commercial customers when utility power is unavailable (i.e., during outages). To provide
this type of protection it is necessary to intentionally island the residence or commercial establishment to
comply with utility safety regulations designed to prevent the back feeding of power onto transmission and
distribution (T&D) lines during a blackout. Islanding can be beneficial to both the utility and the customer,
because it allows the utility to shed loads during high demand periods while protecting the customer’s loads if
the utility fails.

Grid Power Quality Control: In addition to outage protection, power quality ensures constant voltage, phase
angle adjustment, and the removal of extraneous harmonic content from the electric grid. On the customer side,
this function is currently supplied by UPS devices. A UPS must sense, within milliseconds, deviations in the AC
power being supplied and then take action to correct those deviations. UPS functions can be added to PV-
Storage systems in the power conditioning system by designing it to handle high power applications and
including the necessary control functions. UPS functionality can be combined with peak shaving capability in
the same system.

2.DESIGNING A HYBRID PHOTOVOLTAIC PLANT FOR A SPECIFIC LOAD IN INDIA

2.1 DESIGNING TOOL

We have considered a stand-alone PV/diesel/battery hybrid plant to serve the load. There are many soft wares
available in the market for design and simulation of such plants, such as PVSyst, HOMER, RET Screen, sunny
design etc. The accuracy of each of these soft wares are follows:
 Sunny
PVsyst HOMER RETscreen design

total
average
percentage
-4.33% -1.44% -2.31% -4.93%
difference
from actual
yield
Standard
deviation
monthly 6.04%
percentage 5.48% 4.75% 5.11% (annual std
deffrences deviation)
from actual
yield
Table 1. Software comparision[6]

HOMER and RETScreen in particular provide the most accurate results, while PVSyst generally provides
conservative result. Sunny Portal is the simplest of the models and has the least accuracy. HOMER software
has the highest accuracy -1.44% followed by RET Screen which has the accuracy of -2.31%. Here we have used
HOMER for design and simulation.[7]

2.2 LOAD TO BE SERVED

Suppose we have to serve a load which is constant throughout the day i.e. 1MW. This load is same for the night
as well. This corresponds to a total of 24000 KWh units per day. The load is same for whole year, which means
it will consume 87, 60,000 KWh units per year. Now our plant should be designed in such a way that it is able to
serve such load. The load profile for this case is as follows. [11]

Table 2.Primary Load Inputs

 INPUT TABLE
Control parameters
Annual real interest rate (%) 11
Plant working life span 20
Diesel price considered (US$/l) 1
Dispatch strategy load following
Apply setpoint state of charge (%) 50

Photovoltaics modules
0,4000,4100,4200,4400,4600,4800,5000,5200,5400
,5600,5800,6000,6200,6400,6600,6800,7000,7100,
Photovoltaic sizes considered (kW) 7200,7400,10000,11000,12000
Cost of photovoltaic array (US$/kW) 950
Replacement cost of photovoltaic array (US$/kW) 950
Operation and maintenance cost of PV array (US$/kW/year) 20
Type of Photovoltaic modules tracking fixed
Working life of photovoltaic panels (years) 20

Power converter
Power converter sizes considered (kW) 1200
Cost of power converter (US$/kW) 90
Replacement cost of power converter (US$/kW) 90
Operation and maintenance cost of power converter (US$/kW/year) 0
Working life span of power converter (years) 15

Batteries
Nominal capacity of each battery (Ah) 3000
Nominal voltage of each battery (V) 2
Round trip efficiency (%) 86
Minimum state of charge (%) 30
Number of batteries per string 220
016,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,
Number strings considered 32,33,34,35,79,80,81
Minimum battery life (years) 5
Expected lifetime throughput (MWh) 10,196
Cost of battery (US$/battery) 300
Replacement cost of battery (US$/battery) 300
Operation and maintenance cost of batteries (US$/battery/year) 10

Diesel generators
Generator sizes considered (kW) 0,1100
Lifetime operating hours (hours) 20,000
Minimum load ratio (%) 30
Capital cost (US$/kW) 60
Replacement cost (US$/kW) 40
Operation and maintenance cost (US$/hour) 0
Table 3. Input Table

3. RESULTS OF HYBRID PV/ DIESEL PLANT DESIGN

3. AC DC LINE
 Table 4. OPTIMIZED RESULT

Here we have five results in the solution. We will describe each of the result and finally select the best suited for
our condition.
CASE 1 PV/ DIESEL/ BATTERY
CASE 2 PV/ DIESEL
CASE 3 PV/ BATTERY
CASE 4 DIESEL
CASE 5 DIESEL/ BATTERY

Hoppecke
24 OPzS
CASE PV DG 3000 Converter
kW kW nos kW
CASE 1 PV/ DIESEL/ BATTERY 6,400 1,100 4,400 1,200
CASE 2 PV/ DIESEL 4,000 1,100 0 1,200
CASE 3 PV/ BATTERY 11,000 0 17,600 1,200
CASE 4 DIESEL 0 1,100 0 1,200
CASE 5 DIESEL/ BATTERY 0 1,100 3,520 1,200
Table 5. Cases

In above cases PV is used only in first three cases, in case (1) 6,400 KW of PV is used with 1100 KW of diesel
generator and 4400 nos batteries. In case (3) 11,000 KW of PV with 17600 nos batteries are used. In case (2)
4000KW of PV with 1100 KW of diesel generator is used. Last two cases are without PV source. Case (4) has
diesel generator of 1100 KW and case (5) has 1100 KW diesel generator with 3520 nos batteries.1200 KW of
converter is used in all the cases.

Total
Capital Tot. Ann. Tot. Ann. Total O&M Total Fuel Total Operatin
CASE Cost Total NPC Cap. Cost Repl. Cost Cost Cost Ann. Cost g Cost COE
$ $ $/yr $/yr $/yr $/yr $/yr $/yr $/kWh
CASE 1 PV/ DIESEL/ BATTERY 7,574,000 12,339,733 951,110 57,700 172,000 368,760 1,549,570 598,460 0.177
CASE 2 PV/ DIESEL 3,974,000 17,217,118 499,038 14,311 80,000 1,568,702 2,162,051 1,663,013 0.247
CASE 3 PV/ BATTERY 15,838,000 19,005,120 1,988,867 1,713 396,000 0 2,386,580 397,713 0.273
CASE 4 DIESEL 174,000 19,528,444 21,850 19,032 0 2,411,414 2,452,297 2,430,447 0.28
CASE 5 DIESEL/ BATTERY 1,230,000 20,830,500 154,458 18,999 35,200 2,407,147 2,615,803 2,461,345 0.299
Table 6. Cost
In the above cases it is seen that the total capital cost for case (3) is highest. But if we look at total net present
cost case (1) has the least following case (2). The levelized cost of energy (COE) is also least for case1 followed
by case2, case 3, case 4and case 5. For case 1 levelized COE is $0.177/kWh.

3.1 OPTIMUM CASE

 Ren. Fuel Unmet
CASE Total NPC COE Emission Fraction consumption Load
$ $/kWh kg/yr L/yr kWh/yr
CASE 1 PV/ DIESEL/ BATTERY 12,339,733 0.177 997,249 0.87 368,760 0
CASE 2 PV/ DIESEL 17,217,118 0.247 4,242,285 0.5 1,568,702 0
CASE 3 PV/ BATTERY 19,005,120 0.273 0 1 0 7,192
CASE 4 DIESEL 19,528,444 0.28 6,521,253 0 2,411,414 0
CASE 5 DIESEL/ BATTERY 20,830,500 0.299 6509712 0 2,407,147 0
Table 7. Optimum Case

To get the final conclusion we have selected few parameters like COE, total NPC, pollution emission, renewable
fraction, fuel consumption, unmet load and compared them. In the above comparison we can see that case (3)
has highest percentage of renewable fraction. Also there is no pollution emission and no fuel consumption in
this case. But the cost of energy and net present value in case (1) is least. In case (3) there is some unmet load
i.e. there are times when plant will not be able to serve the load. Hence we can conclude that case (1) is the best
case suited to our load.[21]

In all the possible cases of PV/ Diesel/ battery to get the final conclusion we select the case with minimum cost
of electricity and net present cost. The chart below shows all the cases with PV on one side, battery size on other
side and cost of energy plotted between them. The size of the diesel generator is constant i.e. 1100 KW.

Table 8. Battery V/S PV

In the above table it can be seen that $0.177 /KWh is the least levelized cost of energy among all the cases.
Among them the case with PV size 6,400 KW and battery size 4400 nos has the least net present cost i.e.
$12,339,733. Hence this is the optimum solution for case PV/ Diesel/ Battery. The graph is plotted between PV,
battery and LCOE is shown below.

Table 9. Graph Plot

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