Development of Battery/supercapacitor Hybrid Energy Storage Scheme for Grid Connected Solar Pv Source

Abstract

Though attempts for solving the problem of variability of renewable energy (RE) sources have been mitigated through the single energy storages, a gap still exists on the reliability and quality of power produced. The research has expressly developed a hybridized energy scheme for a solar PV source that is integrated to the grid. The prime objective of the study was to achieve a continuous power flow from the solar PV generated with the backup storage from lead acid battery (PbA) and the supercapacitor (SC). The battery would deliver high energy at longer duration while the supercapacitor would deliver high power at shorter period. This research objective was met by obtaining the design parameters and modelling the three power sources namely; solar PV, battery and supercapacitor. The results for this work were obtained through analysing data from the solar PV, battery and supercapacitor using MATLAB Simulink. By observation of the power profiles, comparison was made between the single energy storage systems (ESS) against the hybrid energy storage systems (HESS) components. The outcome from the simulation and presented in graphs format portrayed that the performance of HESS was better than when ESSs were used singularly as means of energy storage backup. The HESS delivered 3.607 kWh against single ESSs at 3.23 kWh for battery and 2.496 kWh for SC respectively. The research report concludes that though the main objectives of harvesting continuous power from a RES with HESS backup was achieved, further studies are recommended. Keywords: Hybrid Energy Storage Systems (HESS), Lead acid battery (PbA), Renewable Energy (RE), Supercapacitor (SC).