Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 22 (2017) 18–24

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Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/seta

Original article

Mitigating techniques for the operational challenges of a standalone

hybrid system integrating renewable energy sources
P.G. Arul ⇑, Vigna K. Ramachandaramurthy
Power Quality Research Group, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Putrajaya Campus, Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Renewable energy sources (RESs) combined with energy storage can significantly increase the resilience
Received 5 October 2016 of standalone systems. However, the intermittent nature of renewable energy resources creates a number
Revised 27 March 2017 of operational challenges for standalone systems. In this paper, the potential challenges facing the oper-
Accepted 23 May 2017
ation of a standalone hybrid system with solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind turbine energy generation and
battery energy storage are addressed. Control strategies for the system sources are developed to mitigate
the potential challenges. A droop-based voltage and frequency control strategy is proposed for the bat-
Keywords:
tery energy storage to balance the mismatch between the renewable generation and the load and to
Standalone hybrid renewable energy system
Droop control
maintain the system stability. An active and reactive power control strategy with maximum power point
Frequency control tracking (MPPT) is proposed for the PV and wind sources to maximize the generation when there is a lack
Voltage control of energy resources and to supply quality power from the sources. A simulation was completed to deter-
AC bus regulation mine the viability of the proposed control strategies. Results show that the proposed control strategies
are able to regulate the system voltage and frequency within the acceptable ranges irrespective of vari-
ations in the sources and the load-demand.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
The utilization of RESs has increased in recent years due to their
significant environmental and economic benefits for the genera-
tion of electricity [1]. Integrating different types of RESs into a sys-
tem that is not connected to the electrical grid forms a standalone
hybrid renewable energy system (SHRES). SHRESs have the poten-
tial to supply continuous electricity similar to the electrical grid.
However, the electricity generated by RESs, such as PV and wind
turbine, is intermittent due to the uncertain and changing natures
of these energy resources. The volatility of the electricity generated
from these energy sources creates an imbalance between the
renewable generation and the load. This imbalance causes devia-
tions of the bus voltage and frequency [2,3] and eventually affects
the system’s stability and power quality [4]. Hence, some type of
energy storage, such as fuel cells [5,6], supercapacitors [7], or bat-
teries [8], must be integrated into the system to balance the mis-
match between the renewable generation and the load by
absorbing power during excess generation and supplying power
during periods of low generation. However, the SHRES sources
require suitable control strategies for the proper sharing of the load
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: pgarul@yahoo.com (P.G. Arul).
to synchronize the balance between the source power and the
load-demand. The load-sharing control strategies based on a com-
munication link and control interconnections increase the control
complexity [9,10], reduce the reliability [11,12], and limit the flex-
ibility and expandability [12] of the system. In addition, such con-
trol strategies require power electronic converters to regulate and
convert the electricity supplied from the sources to the load. The
electricity transferred using a number of power electronic convert-
ers increases the power transmission losses and consequently
reduces the overall system’s efficiency [13]. Maintaining a stable
system, supplying electricity with high quality, load sharing, relia-
bility, flexibility, expandability, and system efficiency are the chal-
lenges in providing a robust SHRES. These technical challenges can
be mitigated by suitable control strategies and an appropriate
interfacing configuration of the system sources.
The technical challenges of SHRESs and their mitigation tech-
niques have been addressed in several articles. The stability and
power quality issues of a DC and AC bus linked standalone system
combining PV, wind turbine and energy storage are discussed in
[14,15]. In [14], the proposed control strategy for the power elec-
tronic converters is to maintain a stable voltage and frequency of
the three-phase AC bus under balanced and unbalanced load con-
ditions by regulating the DC link voltage and the modulation index
of the PWM inverter. A similar approach is presented in [15] for the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.seta.2017.05.004
2213-1388/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 P.G. Arul, V.K. Ramachandaramurthy / Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 22 (2017) 18–24
stable operation of a system supplying power to single-phase AC
loads. A filter circuit has been added at the inverter output to elim-
inate the presence of harmonics and improve the power quality.
However, the DC and AC bus linked standalone hybrid system
has the disadvantage of failing to produce power when the single
inverter supplying the load fails. Through additional inverters,
the reliability of the system can be significantly improved.
Hence, the authors in [16] proposed two inverters for interfac-
ing the DC and AC bus of a standalone hybrid system. These two
inverters are operated in parallel to share the load equally by using
output impedance. The voltage control strategy based on the space
vector pulse width modulation technique is proposed to regulate
the output voltages of both inverters. However, the deviation in
the amplitude or phase angle of the output voltage due to output
impedance causes a circulating current between the inverters
and affects the equal sharing of load. Furthermore, the deviation
in output voltage of the parallel inverters leads to system instabil-
ity. The main disadvantage of using output impedance for sharing
the load is that it increases power losses and, as a result, reduces
the overall efficiency of the system. Furthermore, the proposed
control strategy for the parallel inverters does not include a current
controller, and a large circulating current transient may cause the
inverter to overload and damage the interfacing circuit. The large
current transient also affects the power quality. In addition, the
use of more inverters requires additional controllers and increases
the complexity of the control algorithm.
The control of parallel inverters for load sharing has also been
addressed in the literature. A load sharing control strategy based
on average current sharing control has been proposed for parallel
inverters in [17,18]. The proposed control strategy provides good
load sharing and reduces the circulating current between the par-
allel inverters. A master-slave control strategy is presented in [19]
to uniformly distribute the currents among parallel-connected
converters. In this strategy, the master source is responsible for
supplying a reference current for the slave sources. The proposed
master-slave current sharing control achieves good load sharing
and eliminates the requirement of a phase locked loop (PLL) for
synchronization. Although the average and master-slave controls
have significant benefits, these control strategies require a commu-
nication link between the parallel inverters for current sharing.
However, the load sharing control strategy based on droop concept
avoids the requirement of a communication link and adds desir-
able features such as modularity, flexibility and reliability of the
SHRES [20].
In [21], a control strategy based on model predictive control is
proposed to regulate the voltage and frequency of a standalone
hybrid wind-diesel energy system. To achieve the voltage and fre-
quency regulation, the field voltage and the rotational speed of a
generator fueled by diesel are controlled by computing the optimal
excitation voltage and the diesel fuel rate. However, the proposed
control strategy generally requires a significant computational
effort. The authors in [22] proposed a control scheme employed
with proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and proportional-
derivative (PD) controllers to regulate the frequency of a stan-
dalone hybrid system combining wind turbine generator, diesel
engine generator and energy storage. The proposed control scheme
regulates the output power of the diesel engine generator to main-
tain active power-frequency balance. The PID and PD controllers
eliminate the steady state error and damp out the oscillations in
system frequency after disturbance. However, the system voltage
may exceed the allowable range when the source delivers the
active power. The system voltage can be regulated within the
allowable range by balancing the reactive power. Regulating the
voltage and frequency in proportion to the reactive and active
power flows can be achieved by a control strategy based on droop
control concept.
19
Hence, the authors in [23] proposed a droop control strategy
with voltage control loop for the parallel operation of single-
phase voltage source inverter (VSI). The power sharing and the
voltage and frequency stability are achieved with the proposed
control strategy. However, any phase delays caused by filter circuit
at the inverter output will affect the power quality. The addition of
a current control with the voltage control loop corrects the phase
delays and provides fast compensation for transient disturbances
[24]. In this paper, a control strategy based on droop with voltage
control and current control loops is proposed for three-phase volt-
age source converter (VSC) to ensure the system stability and
power quality. In order to reduce the computational requirement
of the control circuit and achieve the desired control response, a
proportional-integral (PI) controller is adopted in the control loops
of the proposed control strategy.
This paper presents the concept of an experimental prototype of
a SHRES integrating PV, wind turbine and battery energy storage.
The objective of this paper is to design the control strategies for
a three-phase VSI interfaced SHRES sources and investigate the
performance of the proposed control strategies under various oper-
ating conditions. A modular approach to the interfacing configura-
tion and control strategies is given to overcome the challenges in
system flexibility, expandability and reliability. The voltage and
frequency control strategy is designed using the well-known droop
control method for the battery energy storage to regulate the sys-
tem voltage and frequency. The proposed control strategy for the
battery energy storage is capable of managing the power flow dur-
ing the intermittency of RESs and minimizes the transients in the
voltage and frequency. The active and reactive power control strat-
egy is designed with MPPT control for the PV and wind turbine to
regulate the power from the sources. The proposed control strate-
gies are capable of mitigating the potential challenges and improv-
ing the performance of the SHRES significantly.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In 2nd Sec-
tion, the basic configuration of the SHRES for interfacing the
sources with a common AC bus is discussed. The control strategies
for the SHRES sources are discussed and explained in 3rd Section.
Simulation results obtained for various operating conditions are
presented and discussed in 4th Section. Finally, the conclusion of
this work is given in 5th Section.
Basic configuration of the SHRES
The basic configuration of the SHRES considered in this research
work is shown in Fig. 1.
This SHRES integrates PV, wind turbine and battery energy stor-
age sources. These sources are connected separately to the three-
phase common AC bus through appropriate power electronic
converters to achieve the desired conversion. The PV is interfaced
through a VSI to invert the DC output voltage generated by the
PV panels. The wind turbine is equipped with a variable speed
direct drive permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG).
The PMSG is more suitable for standalone applications because it
does not require an AC excitation source for initial operation
[25]. However, the amplitude and frequency of the three-phase
AC voltage generated by the PMSG fluctuates as the wind speed
varies. Therefore, appropriate power electronic converters are
required to connect the wind source. Connecting the wind source
via a three-phase diode rectifier does not require any additional
controllers to regulate the fluctuating frequency and significantly
reduces the overall switching losses of the wind energy conversion
system [26]. Hence, the wind turbine is interfaced through a three-
phase diode rectifier to convert the fluctuating AC output voltage
generated by the wind turbine into a DC voltage, and then, a VSI
inverts the rectified DC voltage. The battery energy storage is
20 P.G. Arul, V.K. Ramachandaramurthy / Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 22 (2017) 18–24
Fig. 1. Basic configuration of the SHRES.
interfaced through a bidirectional VSC that works either in the
rectification mode to convert the AC voltage from the common
AC bus or in the inversion mode to invert the DC output voltage
from the battery bank. Finally, this SHRES is operated to supply
AC loads connected to the common AC bus. In this configuration,
if any of the RESs fails to supply power due to an inability or fault
in the interfacing circuit, the remaining sources can still supply the
required load-demand; therefore, the system is viable [27]. More-
over, when there is a complete lack of generation by the RESs and
the battery is not fully charged, an auxiliary power source such as a
diesel generator or natural gas engine can be added without recon-
figuring the system. However, the addition of an auxiliary power
source is not addressed in this work.
Control strategies for SHRES sources
The interfacing power electronic converters of the SHRES
sources require suitable control strategies to regulate the system
bus voltage, the system bus frequency and the sharing of the load
among the sources. In a SHRES, one or more sources must have a
control strategy to regulate the system bus voltage and frequency.
Generally, the output voltages of PV and wind energy sources vary
severely due to large fluctuations and rapid changes in their energy
resources. Hence, these sources have difficulty controlling the volt-
age and frequency. However, the output voltage variation of the
battery from a fully charged to a discharged state is typically less,
and this variation can be easily controlled to maintain a stable out-
put voltage. In addition, the battery is capable of balancing the
power fluctuations either by absorbing the excess power from
the RESs or by supplying the power to satisfy the load-demand
changes. These significant features are important for realizing the
voltage and frequency control and load sharing control strategies
for the battery energy storage. Hence, a droop-based voltage and
frequency control strategy is proposed for the battery energy stor-
age to regulate the load sharing and the voltage and frequency
within the allowable ranges. Because the voltage stability of the
common AC bus is maintained by the battery energy storage, the
remaining PV and wind sources connected to the common AC
bus will assume the same bus voltage. Therefore, the PV and wind
sources are essentially required to regulate the active and reactive
power injected into the common AC bus. However, the system bus
voltage and frequency will exceed the allowable ranges when the
generation from the PV and wind sources is more than the load-
demand and the battery is charged to its maximum capacity. By
diverting the surplus amount of power to a dump load or by shut-
ting down the sources, the voltage and frequency can be sustained
within the allowable ranges. However, if the RES includes power
point tracking control, the active power curtailment during excess
generation can be achieved by adjusting the power away from the
maximum power point (MPP) value rather than using a dump load
or shutting down the sources. In addition, the maximum power
from the PV and wind sources can be harvested by tracking the
MPP values during low radiation and wind speed periods. Hence,
a control strategy for active and reactive power with MPPT is pro-
posed for the PV and wind sources. However, the MPPT in this
work is used only to track the maximum power during low radia-
tion and wind speed periods. The proposed control strategies for
the SHRES eliminate the requirements of a communication link
and control interconnections, reduce the control complexity and
make the system more reliable, flexible and expandable. Fig. 2
shows the proposed control strategies for the interfacing power
electronic converters of the SHRES sources.
Droop-based voltage and frequency control strategy
The control circuit of the bidirectional VSC for the battery
energy storage contains embedded external and internal cascaded
control loops. The external control loop is configured with an
active power-frequency (P-f) droop to provide active power bal-
ance for frequency stability and reactive power-voltage (Q-V)
droop to provide reactive power balance for voltage stability. The
active and reactive power of the battery energy storage can be cal-
culated as
PB ¼ PL  PðPVþWÞ ð1Þ
Q B ¼ Q L  Q ðPVþWÞ ð2Þ
The active power ðPB Þ derived from Eq. (1) introduces the frequency
droop (f droop ), and the reactive power ð Q B Þ derived from Eq. (2)
introduces the voltage droop (V droop ) based on the following control
relationships.
f droop ¼ f at noload  m ½P B ðat fullloadÞ  PBðat noloadÞ  ð3Þ
V droop ¼ V at noload  n ½Q B ðat fullloadÞ  Q B ðat noloadÞ  ð4Þ
By setting the appropriate droop control coefficients m and n,
f droop and V droop can be controlled within their acceptable limits to
achieve system stability. Table 1 illustrates the interpretation of
the droop characteristics for sharing the power under various
operating conditions of the SHRES.Based on f droop and V droop ; the
three-phase voltage reference for the internal control loop can be
established as follows:
 P.G. Arul, V.K. Ramachandaramurthy / Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 22 (2017) 18–24 21

Fig. 2. Control strategies for the SHRES sources.

Table 1
Droop characteristics under various operating conditions.

Operating conditions Voltage and Droop characteristics Power sharing

No renewable energy
generation
Renewable energy
generation < Load-demand
Renewable energy
generation = Load-demand
Renewable energy
generation > Load-demand
frequency
Drops Regulate the drop in voltage and frequency at a steady Battery energy storage supplies the total load-demand.
state value.
Decreases Regulate the decrease in voltage and frequency within Battery energy storage supplies the insufficient power
the acceptable limits. proportional to the decrease in bus voltage and
frequency until it reaches the minimum discharging
limit.
Stable Maintain the stable voltage and frequency at its PV and wind sources supply the total load-demand.
nominal value. Battery energy storage operates at idle state.
Increases Regulate the increase in voltage and frequency within Battery energy storage absorbs the excess power
the acceptable limits. proportional to the increase in bus voltage and
frequency until it reaches the maximum charging limit.

8
> V ¼ V droop sin ðxt þ hÞ in the d-q reference frame and provides the d-q current reference
< aref 
V bref ¼ V droop sin ðxt  120 þ hÞ ð5Þ for the current controller based on the following control equations.
>
:   
V cref ¼ V droop sin ðxt  240 þ hÞ kid
idref ¼ kpd þ ðV dref  V d Þ ð8Þ
s
The phase angle, h, in (5) is derived by integrating f droop : The internal
control loop is configured with voltage and current controllers. To  
kiq
achieve dynamic performance of the system stability and transient iqref ¼ kpq þ ðV qref  V q Þ ð9Þ
s
response, the voltage and current controllers are designed in the
direct-quadrature (d-q) reference frame. The d-q components of In the current controller, the following control laws are imple-
the three-phase voltage and current are obtained using a Park trans- mented to obtain the required controlled voltage in the d-q refer-
formation as follows. ence frame.
 
V dq ¼ TV abc ð6Þ kid
V dcon ¼ kpd þ ðidref  id Þ  xLf iq þ V d ð10Þ
s
idq ¼ Tiabc ð7Þ  
2 3 kiq
cos h cos ðh  23pÞ cos ðh þ 23pÞ V qcon ¼ kpq þ ðiqref  iq Þ þ xLf id þ V q ð11Þ
s
where T ¼ 23 4 sin h sin ðh  23pÞ 2p 5
sin ðh þ 3 Þ is the transforma-
1 1 1
2 2 2 According to the control Eqs. (10) and (11), the current con-
tion matrix and h is the transformation angle. troller based on the PI control technique controls the current flow-
A PLL is used to obtain the required phase angle for this trans- ing through the bidirectional VSC based on the current errors in the
formation. The voltage controller utilizing the PI control technique d-q reference frame. These current errors are obtained by compar-
controls the common AC bus voltage at the given voltage reference ing the d-q reference current with the measured d-q current. The
22 P.G. Arul, V.K. Ramachandaramurthy / Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 22 (2017) 18–24

decoupling terms of the filter inductor are added in the current Simulation results and discussion
controller to independently control the d-q current components
to improve the system performance under a reactive load. The d- The simulation model of the SHRES sources and the proposed
q controlled voltages, V dcon and V qcon , obtained from the current control strategies are developed in PSCAD/EMTDC software. The
controller based on (10) and (11) are then transformed using an response to the proposed control strategies is investigated under
inverse Park transformation to yield the three-phase abc controlled various operating conditions.
voltages, Vacon, Vbcon, and Vccon, that are necessary for the sinusoidal
pulse width modulation (SPWM) generator to generate the desired Load-demand without RESs
control signals. These control signals operate the bidirectional VSC
to regulate both the increase in the common AC bus voltage by In this case, zero power is injected from the RESs. Based on Eqs.
absorbing the reactive power and the decrease in the common (1) and (2), the load-demand must be supplied by the battery
AC bus voltage by supplying the reactive power. Additionally, the energy storage. To investigate the performance of the proposed
bidirectional VSC is operated to regulate both the increase in the control strategy, constant and step loads are applied. Simulation
bus frequency by absorbing the active power and the decrease in results of the SHRES with only the battery energy storage are
the frequency by supplying the active power. Hence, the battery shown in Fig. 3.
energy storage maintains a stable common AC bus voltage within A constant load is applied for the first 10 s. The step loads are
the acceptable range by adjusting the reactive power and a stable applied after t = 10 s. For 0 < t < 10 s, the load is maintained con-
bus frequency within the acceptable range by adjusting the active stant at 1.2 kW. A decrease in the step loads is applied at t = 10 s
power balance between the renewable electricity generation and and t = 12 s. At t = 10 s, the load is decreased to 0.3 kW and
the load-demand. assumed to be constant for 10 < t < 12 s. A further 0.3 kW decrease
in load is applied at t = 12 s and assumed to be constant for
Active and reactive power control strategy with MPPT 12 < t < 14 s. Similarly, the increase in step loads is applied at
t = 14 s and t = 16 s. A 0.3 kW increase in load is applied at
The control circuit of the VSI for the PV source contains embed- t = 14 s and assumed to be constant for 14 < t < 16 s. At t = 16 s,
ded outer and inner cascaded control loops. In the outer control the load is further increased to 0.3 kW and remains constant at
loop, the active power is controlled at the MPP reference values, 1.2 kW till t = 20 s.
and the reactive power is controlled at the set reference value. The power supplied by the battery energy storage is shown in
The MPP reference values are obtained by using MPPT based on Fig. 3(a). Results show that the power supplied by the battery
an incremental conductance algorithm. The error value obtained energy storage is well balanced with the constant and step loads.
by comparing the MPP power, PMPP, and the measured value of
active power at the VSI output is controlled to produce the d-axis
reference current based on the following control equation.
 
kiP
idref ¼ kpP þ ðPMPP  PPV Þ ð12Þ
s
Similarly, the error value obtained by comparing the set
reference value of the reactive power and the measured value
of the reactive power at the load side is controlled to produce
the q-axis reference current based on the following control
equation.
 
kiQ
iqref ¼ kpQ þ ðQ ref  Q PV Þ ð13Þ
s
The inner current control loop is implemented in the d-q refer-
ence frame based on the control laws expressed in (10) and (11).
The d-q controlled voltages obtained from the inner current control
loop are then transformed into abc controlled voltages necessary
for the SPWM generator to generate the desired control signals.
The transformations of the abc to d-q and the d-q to abc voltages
and currents are accomplished using Park and inverse Park trans-
formations. The phase angle required for these transformations is
obtained using PLL. The common AC bus voltage is used as an input
for the PLL to synchronize the phase angle of the source output
voltage with the bus voltage. The controllers in the outer power
control loop and the inner current control loop utilize the PI
control technique. The control signals generated from this
proposed control strategy operate the VSI to regulate the active
and reactive power supplied by the PV source. Hence, the proposed
control strategy allows the source to supply maximum power by
regulating the output power at the MPP values and improves
the quality of power by regulating the reactive power at the
given set reference value. A similar control approach is embedded
in the control circuit of the VSI for the wind source. Moreover,
power sharing control between the PV and wind sources is Fig. 3. Simulation results of a SHRES without RESs for supplying constant and step
also realized. loads: (a) active power, (b) bus voltage, and (c) bus frequency.
 P.G. Arul, V.K. Ramachandaramurthy / Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 22 (2017) 18–24
The responses of the bus voltage and frequency corresponding to
the constant and step loads are shown in Fig. 3(b) and (c). It is
observed from Fig. 3(c) that the frequency deviates slightly during
load change and returns back to the steady state value very
quickly. The results show that the battery energy storage supplies
the load-demand and maintains a stable common AC bus voltage
and frequency.
Load-demand with RESs
In this case, the RESs are added to supply the load-demand.
Adding RESs to a weak AC bus will cause stability issues. Therefore,
a stable source must initially be operated to form a strong AC bus.
In the proposed SHRES, the battery energy storage is operated first
to establish a strong AC bus. To evaluate the proposed control
strategies in this study, minimum and maximum values of output
power from the RESs as well as step changes in the load-demand
are considered. The differences between the output power gener-
ated by the RESs and the load-demand result in several operating
conditions for the SHRES.
The simulation results are shown in Fig. 4. Initially, a constant
load is applied for 10 s.
Then, the step loads are applied after t = 10 s. Fig. 4(a) shows the
active power sharing for constant and step loads. The maximum
load-demand and zero power generation from the RESs are
selected as the initial operating conditions. As shown in Fig. 4(a),
the battery energy storage is discharged to supply 1.2 kW to the
load under the initial operating conditions.During these initial
Fig. 4. Simulation results of a SHRES with RESs for supplying constant and step
loads under various operating conditions: (a) active power, (b) bus voltage, and (c)
bus frequency. (REG – Renewable Energy Generation; LD – Load-demand).
23
operating conditions, the frequency at the P-f droop drops from
50 Hz to 49.5 Hz according to the droop settings. At t = 2 s, the
wind source supplies an output power of 900 W at its rated wind
speed of 12 m/s. Because the total output power generated by
the RESs is less than the load-demand, the frequency is controlled
below 50 Hz. For this operating condition, the battery energy stor-
age provides 300 W to satisfy the total load-demand. From t = 4 s
to 8 s, the PV source supplies an output power of 300 W at its rated
irradiation of 1000 W/m2. During this period, the 1.2 kW load is
managed by the RESs, and the output power of the battery energy
storage drops to zero. The frequency at the P-f droop is stable at the
rated 50 Hz for this operating condition. At t = 8 s, the PV power
falls to zero due to the drop in irradiation from 1000 W/m2 to
0 W/m2. The battery energy storage provides the shortage of power
to balance the power variation by adjusting the f droop :After t = 10 s,
the step loads are applied. The step load is decreased at t = 10 s and
t = 12 s. At t = 10 s, the load is decreased by 0.3 kW and assumed to
be constant for 10 < t < 12 s. During this period, the 0.9 kW load is
supplied by the wind source and the output power of the battery
energy storage drops to zero. The frequency at the P-f droop is
stable at the rated 50 Hz for this operating condition. At t = 12 s,
the load is decreased to 0.6 kW and assumed to be constant for
12 < t < 14 s. The total output power generated from the RESs is
greater than the load-demand for 12 < t < 14 s. The frequency at
the P-f droop is raised to 50.1 Hz during this period. For this oper-
ating condition, the battery energy storage starts to charge by
absorbing the excess power proportional to the increase in fre-
quency. Similarly, the increase in step loads is applied at t = 14 s
and t = 16 s. A 0.3 kW increase in load is applied at t = 14 s and
assumed to be constant for 14 < t < 16 s. During this period, the
total load-demand is supplied by the wind source and the output
power of the battery energy storage drops to zero. The frequency
at the P-f droop is stable at the rated 50 Hz for this operating con-
dition. At t = 16 s, the load is further increased to 0.3 kW and
remains constant at 1.2 kW till t = 20 s. The wind source supplies
0.9 kW and the battery energy storage supplies the shortage of
power by adjusting the f droop below 50 Hz.
As shown in Fig. 5, the battery energy storage supplies power
when the frequency falls below 50 Hz and absorbs power when
the frequency rises above 50 Hz. The droop for the frequency is
set at ±1%. Therefore, when the frequency exceeds 50.5 Hz due to
excess generation, the RESs are forced to disconnect from the sys-
tem for reliable operation. It is observed from Fig. 4(a) that the
power flow during the intermittency of RESs and the changes in
load-demand is well balanced by regulating the f droop .
The proposed control strategies for the SHRES sources regulate
not only the active power but also the reactive power. While con-
necting the RESs to the common AC bus, the amplitude of the
source output voltages are synchronized with the common AC
bus voltage by adjusting their reactive powers. Fig. 6 shows the
synchronization of the output voltages delivered by the system
sources.
Fig. 5. Simulation results of the frequency at the P-f droop control.
24 P.G. Arul, V.K. Ramachandaramurthy / Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 22 (2017) 18–24
Fig. 6. Simulation results of the output voltages delivered from the SHRES sources.
Fig. 7. Simulation results of the reactive power delivered by the SHRES sources.
The common AC bus voltage is increased when the sources deli-
ver active power. However, the increase in the common AC bus
voltage can be reduced by absorbing the reactive power. This
approach is used to regulate the system bus voltage. In this study,
the Q-V droop for the battery energy storage coordinates the reac-
tive power from the system sources to regulate the bus voltage.
The reactive power delivered by the system sources is shown in
Fig. 7. It is obvious from Fig. 7 that the proposed SHRES operates
with a unity power factor by balancing the reactive powers.
The responses of the common AC bus voltage and frequency for
this case study are shown in Fig. 4(b) and (c). The results show that
the common AC bus voltage and frequency are regulated within
the acceptable limits irrespective of variations in the sources and
the load-demand.
Conclusion
In this paper, the potential challenges of operating a standalone
hybrid AC power system with PV, wind turbine and battery energy
storage are discussed. A modular approach to interfacing the
sources and control strategies is given to improve the reliability
of the SHRES. The droop-based voltage and frequency control strat-
egy for the bidirectional VSC is capable of supplying or absorbing
the active and reactive power. Hence, the battery energy storage
plays the lead role in maintaining the system stability by balancing
the active and reactive power. The active and reactive power con-
trol strategy with MPPT maximizes the renewable energy genera-
tion and increases the quality of the power supplied by the PV and
wind sources. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed
control strategies provide a stable system under various operating
conditions. The current research is focused on the experimental
validation of the proposed control strategies by considering the
power curtailment during excess generation.
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