2019 3rd International Conference on Recent Developments in Control, Automation & Power Engineering (RDCAPE)
Microgrid System for A Rural Area - An Analysis
of HOMER Optimised Model Using MATLAB
Gourav Kumar Suman
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
NERIST
Nirjuli, India
gauravsuman283@gmail.com
Abstract—There have been many methods of attaining a
suitable combination of renewable energy sources. This work
analyses the stability of one such system optimised by HOME-
Rquickstart for a small community at Gurmia, India; on the
occurrence of faults. The chosen location has a fair potential of
solar and wind energy, trapping of these resources efficiently
in the form of hybrid microgrid systems could solve major
power issues and in the same time supersede the old grids. This
work involves simulation of an optimised model obtained from
HOMERquickstart package using Simulink. Various cases are
considered in interlinking of the energy sources for the microgrid
and their respective transient behaviour in the occurrence of
faults are observed.
Index Terms—Microgrid, HRES, Transient stability, Simulink,
HOMERquickstart
I. I NTRODUCTION
Conventionally the mode of generation of electrical energy
was through the utilisation of fossil fuel relied upon as primary
source of energy. The crunch in traditional sources and their
adverse impacts to the environment has posed a challenge to
the future of civilisation [1] which is predominantly dependent
on these sources for energy. Renewable energy sources may
act as saviours from this scenario. In addition to lower mainte-
nance and operational costs the most important characteristic
carried by renewable resources is their environment friendly
nature. As of now, the renewable energy sources account for a
total of 63% share in total generation capacity as per the data
from Renewables 2019 Global Status Report (Paris, 2019).
Amid all the renewable energy sources, solar and wind energy
sources have gained higher attention with greater impact to the
power system. The only limitation being their intermittency
which could be coped up by certain-combination of these
sources to attain a Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES)
[2]. In addition microgrids seem to have brought a revolution
in power industry with its ability to set up at hostile landscapes
[3]. There is an increase in demand of electrical energy due
to the growing population, the need is highly apt in country
like India where the power failures are pretty common with
many of the rural areas facing inadequate supply of power [4],
[5]. With ideas on significance of renewable energy sources,
the application of the same has been discussed for a locality
in India in present work. There are various methods and
softwares for optimisation of renewables in hybrid system as
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Om Prakash Roy
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
NERIST
Nirjuli, India
opr@nerist.ac.in
explained in [6], [7] viz. HOMER, iHOGA etc, this work uses
one such result and analyses the transient behaviour of the
system on an event of occurrence of fault. This work realises
the importance of PV and wind sources in addition to their
compatibility in a microgrid for a community load.
II. M ETHODOLOGY
A microgrid has to ensure reliability, cost effectiveness and
efficiency in operation. This has to be maintained for the cases
of both islanded and grid connected mode of operation. Opti-
misation of hybrid system is necessary in order to minimise the
cost at the desired operating condition maintaining the required
constraints. ”Optimisation could be referred as formulation of
a mathematical problem based on the desired output within
the design constraint” as stated in [8]. For designing an
optimum configuration of a hybrid system, substantial research
is required on environmental conditions throughout the year
in the location of interest. For designing any mG, the first
and the most crucial step is to learn the load demand of the
target location. The aforesaid step is very crucial in designing
the system and any discrepancy in this stage could lead
to wrong estimation of demand, which in turn would lead
to unmet loads or excessive energy beyond the capacity of
storage. Several software tools exist for optimisation of hybrid
systems, one such tool namely; HOMER is used in this work.
HOMER software is meant for single-objective and nonlinear
analysis of a system. This software makes the decision making
possible by simulation of many methods and technological
cost variation which otherwise would have been a tough task.
The software provides an optimal configuration for the desired
location maintaining the user defined constraints at the same
time. Basic version of HOMER i.e. HOMERquickstart has
been used in this work for optimal sizing of the renewable
energy sources involved in the system. This work discusses the
options for hybrid renewable energy sources for a small section
in a village Gurmia in the Indian State of Bihar. The location
chosen is as shown in Fig. 1. The random nature of renewable
energy sources makes their prediction a challenge hence
optimisation method study would reduce the cost of the system
and make the system more reliable. An optimum management
of resource is important for a reasonable balance between
the system components and economy. The selected location
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 2019 3rd International Conference on Recent Developments in Control, Automation & Power Engineering (RDCAPE)
Fig. 1. Chosen location, Gurmia, India
Fig. 2. Availability and variation chart of solar and wind energy at Gurmia
has a sufficient source of solar and wind energy. The average
solar radiation at the surface was 9.483 kW h/m2 /day, wind
speed was measured to be 4.43 m/s [Surface Meteorology and
Database - NASA]. The clearness index at the location was
observed to be varying between 0.691 (max) and 0.411(min).
The availability of sources of energy at Gurmia is represented
in figure 2, where the blue bins represent the solar radiation,
the amber bins represent wind speed and the curve denote
the clearness index of solar radiation on the surface. The
maximum solar radiation is recorded in the month of April
which is about 7 kW h/m2 /day and the minimum of 4.07
kW h/m2 /day in the month of December. This plot shows
that the potential of solar energy in the area is quite good
making it an inevitable source of energy in the region.
The energy demand of 63 houses in the locality was consid-
ered with an average demand of about 165 kW h/day. In the
presented system the load can be met up as per the availability
of energy source like during the morning hours PV can be used
and during the peak hours the load can be met by wind farm.
The load applied to the system bears a load factor of 0.34 with
a peak load of 20.46 kW at a hourly variation of 20% and daily
variation of 10%, all loads are considered to be AC loads. A
typical community load profile could be as seen from fig. 3,
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Fig. 3. Load profile - as used in HOMERquickstart
Fig. 4. The Hybrid Renewable Energy Sources chosen in HOMERquickstart
where the blue bins represent the demand on weekdays and
the amber bins represent the demand on weekends. During
the early hours it could be seen that the power demand is
low and the load demand increases from 0500 hours onwards.
As it is a community load profile, the trend of increase in
power demand lasts upto 2100 hours. Additionally, peak hours
of the day lie between 1800 to 2100 hours as most of the
people are home by then. The demand eventually decreases
after 2100 hours marking end of the day or time of rest.
Coming to the design of solar resource, HOMERquickstart
takes the average radiation along with ambient temperature as
its input for defining the output PV power. The mathematical
explanation of the output defined by HOMERquickstart does
not fall in our scope for present piece of work but the same
could be seen from literature such as [9]. The optimised system
as obtained from HOMERquickstart is shown in fig. 4. The
output of the PV array as obtained from HOMERquickstart
has been depicted in fig. 5. It can clearly be seen from the
plot that the maximum solar output is generated during the
time interval of 0600-1800 hours and the output is high in
every month but for July and August owing to low clearness
index as shown in fig. 2. In addition the battery state of charge
has also been given in fig. 6, from which it is clearly visible
that the battery remains completely charged between 1200 -
1800 hours, as the demand is met by the available renewable
energy sources during this period.
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 2019 3rd International Conference on Recent Developments in Control, Automation & Power Engineering (RDCAPE)
Fig. 5. PV output
Fig. 6. Battery state of charge
III. S YSTEM D ESCRIPTION AND S IMULATION
The system chosen for this work is PV-Wind hybrid system
in combination with a generator set and battery storage system
in order to maintain the smoothness and accuracy in power
flow [9], [10]. The initial cost in this case may be higher than
conventional systems but this system proves to be cost effec-
tive in the long run owing to its lower maintenance and fuel
costs. The optimised system obtained from HOMERquickstart
was then designed in MATLAB simulink and analysed. For
evaluation of advantages of PV-wind configuration, an islanded
microgrid has been obtained in simulink. The conventional
generation is rated so that it could supply the entire load in
absence of renewable energy sources (at some interval) thereby
keeping the system reliable. Transient stability of the system
is realised by taking each of the renewable energy sources
separately and also in hybrid combination of renewable energy
sources.
A. PV Modelling
A photovoltaic cell harnesses and converts solar energy
into electrical energy. A single diode solar cell model is
implemented in the model to make and array of solar cells.
The current generated could be given by equation 1 [11], [12].
q(V +IRs ) V + IRs
I = Iph − Is [e N KT − 1] −
Rsh
where, I is the generated current, V is the voltage, Iph is the
photocurrent, Is the diode saturation current, K(1380X10−23 )
being the Boltzmann constant, T is the temperature and N is
the factor of ideality of diode, Rs and Rsh are the series and
shunt resistances. The photocurrent is given by equation 2.
G the bus causes large oscillations at the load terminal which is
Iph = [Isc + Ki (T − 298)]
1000
Where, Isc is the photocurrent at temperature T and irradiance
G, Ki is the temperature coefficient of short circuit.
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B. Wind Farm Modelling
Model of wind turbine is designed with the help of follow-
ing equations [13]–[15]:
ρV ω 3 RCp
TΩ = 0.5 (3)
ωr
Cf
λi = R (4)
λ
Cp = 0.5(0.22β − λi − 2)eλi (5)
Where, TΩ is the torque of wind turbine, ρ is the density
of air, Vω is the wind velocity, R is the blade radius, Cp is
the power coefficient, λi is the tip speed ratio and β is the
pitch angle. The basic parameters of the system used for the
model is shown in the table I. The model designed with the
aforementioned parameters in simulink could be seen from
Fig. 7. This model comprises of PV system, Doubly Fed
Induction Generator (DFIG) windfarm and a generator set.
Photovoltaic system bears its own boost converter along with
MPPT control. A method of perturb and observe technique
have been implemented for extracting most of the power from
the PV arrays [16].
IV. A NALYSIS
The designed system as shown in fig. 7 is tested for transient
stability under three phase to ground fault. It has been seen
that on occurrence of three phase faults the terminal voltage
falls down and a sag is observed in voltages from all the
sources [17]. This could be prevented to an extent by using a
battery backup. The microGrid designed here was analysed in
certain combinations among themselves, giving rise to three
of the given possibilities. These cases were analysed over a
time period of (0-500)ms, with a brief period of three phase
short circuit fault (3L-G) for about 100ms. During the event
of fault, the behaviour of each of the energy generation units
at their respective terminals were observed and are detailed as
follows.
A. First combination - Generator with PV
For this analysis the windfarm subsystem is excluded from
the model and a 3L-G fault is applied at the duration of 200
(1)
to 300 ms, the voltages at different points of the model is
observed during the pre and post fault condition. The plots in
Fig. 8 show the voltages at generator terminals, solar array,
bus and load. It could clearly be seen from the plots that the
bus voltage during the post fault scenario reaches a mark of
2 pu, which then restores back to the nominal voltage range
after 10 ms of fault clearance. This variation of voltage at
(2) not healthy from load point of view. This configuration shows
us the impact of PV array on attained terminal voltage at the
load, making a system based on only PV source and generator
quite unsuitable.
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 2019 3rd International Conference on Recent Developments in Control, Automation & Power Engineering (RDCAPE)

TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF THE MODEL

Pnom (kVA) VL−L (kV) Xd Xd’ Xd” Xq

Generator 1500 13 1.305 0.296 0.252 0.474
data Xq” Tdo’ Tdo” Tqo”
0.18 0.243 4.49 0.0513
Step up Pn Vp Vs R1 and R2 L1 and L2 –
xmer 1.5 MVA 13 kV 25 kV 0.08/30 pu 0.08 pu –
Txn r1 (Ω/km) r0 (Ω/km) I1 (H/km) I0 (H/km) C1 (F/km) C0 (F/km)
lines 0.1153 0.413 1.05e-3 3.32e-3 11.33e-9 5.01e-3
PV Pnom (kW) Vp (V) Vs (kV) R1, R2 (pu) L1, L2 (pu) –
Output 150 260 25 0.001 0.03 –
Wind Pnom (MW) Vdcbus (kV) Swind (m/s) H (s) θpmax deg VL−L (V)
Output 1.5 1.15 4.43 4.32 27 575
Step-down Pn (MVA) Vp (V) Vs (kV) R1, R2 (pu) L1, L2 (pu) –
xmer 1.75 575 25 0.25/30 0.25 –

Fig. 7. Designed islanded microgrid with PV and wind farms

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 2019 3rd International Conference on Recent Developments in Control, Automation & Power Engineering (RDCAPE)

Fig. 8. Voltages at different places of microgrid in presence of generator and PV only

Fig. 9. Voltages at different points of microgrid in presence of generator and wind only

B. Second combination - Generator with wind
In this case the PV subsystem is removed from the simu-
lation and a 3L-G fault is applied at the load for a period of
200 to 300 ms, the voltages at various points of the model
is observed during the pre fault and post fault condition. The
plots in figure 9 show the voltages at various points in the
microgrid. Unlike previous combination, it could clearly be
seen from the plots that the oscillations at the bus has reduced
in the post fault scenario. The terminal voltage at the load
is within the limit with less or no vigorous oscillations as
compared to the case with PV and generator. The post fault
voltage reaches upto 0.75 pu unlike 2 pu of previous case. This
result makes the wind and generator based system a bit suitable
for the load if the load demand could be met completely.
C. Third combination - Generator with PV and wind
With respect to the previous cases of PV/generator and
Wind/Generator, the final case was studied. In the final case
both PV and Wind sources are included in the simulation and
the respective voltages at various points in the microgrid has
been observes for a 3L-G fault applied near the load as similar
to the previous cases. The voltage plots have been shown in
figure 10. It has clearly been seen from figures 8 - 10 that
wind farm has a positive impact on post fault transients of
the hybrid system. Figures depict that hybrid system of PV-
Wind responds better than the PV system working alone as a
renewable energy source. The bus voltage at the fault clearance
scenario ranges to upto 0.8 pu. From the plots it is clear
that the post fault oscillations are lesser when compared to
the first case of PV and generator. Though wind/generator
combination proves to be healthy for a load, the concern
in a microgrid is meeting the demand of the load which
could not be achieved with wind sources alone owing to its
varying nature and intermittency. As a result the combination
of PV/Wind/generator has been considered to be the best suited
system.
V. C ONCLUSION
An islanded microgrid was modelled in simulink with
various input parameters as obtained from HOMERquickstart
software consisting of wind farm integrated with solar, diesel
and battery units to supply a load of 165 kW h/day of a
rural area (Gurmia,India). Three phase fault was applied to
the system near the load and the voltages were checked
at various terminals of the system. The results suggest that

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 2019 3rd International Conference on Recent Developments in Control, Automation & Power Engineering (RDCAPE)

Fig. 10. Voltages at different points of microgrid in presence of generator, PV and wind

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