Author: Jingwan Yang
Yang, Jingwan, 2020 Optimal sizing of renewable-storage based electricity supply systems for households in remote areas: A comparative study of battery and fuel cell, Flinders University, College of Science and Engineering
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This report focuses on the study of the optimal capacity of systems that rely on solar photovoltaic (SPV) and small wind turbine (SWT) as the primary sources of electricity supply. Standalone households in remote areas of South Australia (SA) that have difficulty accessing power networks due to distance problems will be focused. Two storage systems are investigated: fuel cell storage (FCS) and battery energy storage (BES) alongside the renewable energy systems. There are two basic configurations: SPV-SWT-FCS and SPV-SWT-BES. In addition, four other auxiliary systems, including SPV-FCS, SWT-FCS, SPV-BES and SWT-BES will be simulated for comparative analysis. The optimal capacity of the components in each system configuration will be calculated based on the net present cost (NPC) of the power system as the objective function. It is assumed that uninterrupted supply of power demand will be guaranteed in all configurations. The power supply process is mainly divided into three situations: the generation equals the demand; the generation exceeds the demand and the generation is less than the demand. This study analyses the optimal configuration of the system according to different supply and demand relations using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. In addition, the configurations with BES will be compared with that of FCS to explore the advantages and disadvantages of each system. In the last section, the use of mixed energy storage system SPV-SWT-BES-FCS to investigate the minimum NPC of the system will be discussed. The mixed energy storage configuration has the same modeling method as the previous configurations, adopting the mentioned three supply relationships. Next, the SPV-BES-FCS and SWT-BES-FCS configurations are simulated as well. Additionally, the comparison of the mixed energy storage system and the single energy storage system is included in the thesis. At the end, there is sensitivity analysis of the mixed energy storage system based on the costs of BES and FCS.
In the simulation, MATLAB software is used to model the data for ten households. The Visual Studio is also used to model the SPV-SWT-FCS system and SPV-SWT-BES system for one household. Mock objects include SPV-SWT-FCS, SPV-FCS, SWT-FCS, SPV-SWT-BES, SPV-BES, SWT-BES, SPV-SWT-BES-FCS, SPV-BES-FCS and SWT-BES-FCS configurations. In simulation results, the optimized component number, the output power, the minimized system net present costs and the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) are the outputs. Power input and output diagrams of key components are also displayed to determine the role of each device in the overall operation of the systems.
Keywords: capacity optimization, standalone households, remote area, uninterrupted supply, fuel cell, battery, particle swarm optimization, mixed energy storage
Subject: Engineering thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2020
School: College of Science and Engineering
Supervisor: Amin Mahmoudi