There has been an increased interest in renewable energy systems in recent years as a result of concerns on depleting fossil fuel reserves and climate change. Wind and solar energy are amongst the most popular renewable energy technologies. In order to use the full or maximum possible extent of a renewable energy resource in a region, hybrid systems extracting wind and solar energy simultaneously are a popular and obvious choice. It is desired to design hybrid systems that enhance the renewable energy output without increasing the foot print area compared to the base case of only wind or only solar energy. One potential way forward is to consider a vertical axis wind turbine with an enhanced surface area which can be used for mounting solar cells. This way the foot print area remains the same while both wind and solar power are obtained simultaneously. Renewable Energy Solutions LLC has manufactured a novel 2 m high and 2 m in diameter vertical axis wind turbine called Marilyn which has an enhanced surface area, which can be used for the aforementioned purpose. This thesis focuses on the development of a hybrid solar-wind turbine design based on the Marilyn system. Firstly, the wind and solar resource was assessed at Austin, TX using weather monitoring instruments. Typical Meteorological Year 3 (TMY3) data was also used in conjunction with the measured data to estimate the wind and solar resource at Austin, TX. Secondly, the wind turbine performance was assessed based on whether is it able to achieve grid tie in for wind power production starting at wind speeds of 3-4 m/s. It was found that replacing the current generator with different model featuring higher voltage output at lower rotational speeds could help achieve this. Based on this suggested replacement and using the wind resource data, the yearly wind energy production was estimated to be 240 kWh. Finally, a theoretical analysis was performed for estimating the yearly solar energy production. A base case analysis was first made on power production on a particular day of the year if only the top portion of every alternate face of the turbine is covered with flexible 3.4 % efficient solar cells. This analysis is subsequently extended to the case when flexible 20 % efficient solar cells cover the entire top surface of the turbine and the corresponding conservative yearly solar energy output was estimated to be 310 kWh. Thus the total yearly energy output from the Marilyn hybrid system is 550 kWh, which is around 5 % of the annual electricity usage of a typical American home / text

Intermittent nature of renewable energy sources like the wind and solar energy poses new challenges to harness and supply uninterrupted power for consumer usage. Though, converting energy from these sources to useful forms of energy like electricity seems to be promising, still, significant innovations are needed in design and construction of wind turbines and PV arrays with BS systems. The main focus of this research project is mathematical modelling and control of wind turbines, solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays and battery storage (BS) systems. After careful literature review on renewable energy systems, new developments and existing modelling and controlling methods have been analysed. Wind turbine (WT) generator speed control, turbine blade pitch angle control (pitching), harnessing maximum power from the wind turbines have been investigated and presented in detail. Mathematical modelling of PV arrays and how to extract maximum power from PV systems have been analysed in detail. Application of model predictive control (MPC) to regulate the output power of the wind turbine and generator speed control with variable wind speeds have been proposed by formulating a linear model from a nonlinear mathematical model of a WT. Battery chemistry and nonlinear behaviour of battery parameters have been analysed to present a new equivalent electrical circuit model. Converting the captured solar energy into useful forms, and storing it for future use when the Sun itself is obscured is implemented by using battery storage systems presenting a new simulation model. Temperature effect on battery cells and dynamic battery pack modelling have been described with an accurate state of charge estimation method. The concise description on power converters is also addressed with special reference to state-space models. Bi-directional AC/DC converter, which could work in either rectifier or inverter modes is described with a cost effective proportional integral derivative (PID/State-feedback) controller.

As a cost-effective test method, a vehicle-based test rig can be utilized in small wind turbine experimental work to facilitate turbine performance tests under a range of controlled wind speeds, as well as to validate turbulent flow models. The instrumentation of a custom trailer-based mobile wind turbine test rig has been modified to provide a platform for full rotor speed control. A control system coupled to an electric vehicle controller with regenerative braking technology was developed in five steps, namely: system modeling in Simulink, system identification, control system design and analysis, control system implementation in LabVIEW, and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller tuning in real-time. A custom Graphical User Interface (GUI) was also developed. Furthermore, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis was conducted to assess the potential impact of towing vehicle’s disturbance on the free stream available to the rotor disc. This trailer rig will allow up to a 1kW wind turbine. It can be towed behind a vehicle to conduct steady state tests or it can be parked in an open area to collect unsteady field data. It has been tested in a towed scenario and the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) predictions were compared with the obtained aggregate performance curve. / Graduate / 0548 / 0791 / 0544 / khorsand@uvic.ca

Reducing the carbon footprint of domestic properties is, due to global warming and social impact of increased energy costs, an ever increasing priority. Although the compulsive building standards are set by the building regulation part L1, The Code for Sustainable Homes have set more stringent requirements above the requirements of Building Regulations to achieve zero carbon emissions during occupation. This Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) requires all new homes to be zero carbon by 2016. Land scarcity and lower number of people per household forces developers to develop compact apartment-based dwellings on brown field sites, constraining the design. The aim of this research is to understand the effect of practical constraints on real building design and technology on achieving zero carbon performance in compact urban dwellings in a maritime northern European climate. In this work, currently commercially implementable renewable generation technologies are evaluated for their suitability in a compact urban setting. A model-based approach is developed to evaluate the energy consumption (both regulated and unregulated) and energy balance under the specific constraints of compact urban buildings. Graphical representation enables the introduction of a demand envelope, which shows the boundaries of the minimum and maximum expected thermal and electrical energy consumption over one year period. The research has three key findings: 1. Due to variations in energy consumption by the occupants, mainly by the unregulated energy consumption, multiple renewable energy technologies would have to be implemented to achieve the lowest possible carbon emission. 2. Although the combination of PV, CHP and HP is the generation option with the lowest carbon emissions, it is not completely carbon free when producing the required electrical and thermal energy. This suggests that there is a high likelihood that zero-carbon energy generation can not be achieved in this case study of a compact urban dwelling with the currently available technology. 3. The simulations show that with highly insulated dwellings the amount of space heating required is less than 10% of the overall energy consumption, as opposed to the 60% generally achieved in the building industry. Subsequent on-site measurements showed an estimation of just under 30% of the total energy consumption was used in space heating, which is higher than the simulated value, but still less than half that of a conventional dwelling. The main academic recommendation resulting from this research is a requirement for further ongoing research into new generation technologies as they become mature. Recommendations for the sponsoring company include continuation of measurements at the case study building to enable confirmation of energy consumption/generation findings so far.

Hybrid renewable energy systems (HRES) have proven to be a more stable and feasible source of energy than heir single source counterparts. The benefit of HRES is their ability to balance the stochastic behavior of wind and solar production. As result of this, they have been used as stand-alone systems with great success. Optimization studies in the field have shown optimum sizing of the components in the system to be a key element in order to increase feasibility. This paper focuses on the HRES impact on internal grid design and cost. The goal of the thesis is to create a mathematical function and graph on the internal grid design/cost relation for a virtual site with varying wind speed and solar irradiation. A secondary goal is to analyze how much Photovoltaics (PV) in Megawatt (MW) that can be connected to the internal grid post realization of the wind farm and to performed this analyze on the two specific case projects, Site A (17.25 MW) in Sweden and Site B (51.75 MW) in Italy. By utilizing a case study methodology, a mathematical model was created based on two case projects, both with potential to be a combined Wind-PV hybrid plants provided by the wind developer OX2. Identifiers for the two cases studied in this thesis where removed with respect to OX2’s ongoing projects. Hybrid renewable energy systems is a method of increasing the utilization of a regions RES, the system has an increase in overall power output compared to the single RES alternative. However, the internal grid cost was shown to be 3.85 % more expensive Site A and 5.3 % in Site B. This stood in direct correlation to the HRES in Site A using 8.6 % more cable for its internal grid and 29.7 % more in Site B, this is highly depending (depending on the location of the PV array). Furthermore, the case projects showed that the maximum PV to be connected post realization of the farm without major curtailment would be 11.5% of the wind farms rated power in the case of site A and 67.6 % in the case of Site B. Variations in wind speed and solar irradiation were shown to have some impact on grid cost. However, the results pointed out that grid cost in HRES is to a higher degree affected by total cable length in the internal grid than fluctuation in available energy sources. The extent of increase in cable length, the total grid investment cost rises up to 53.4 % for the two case projects.

The global requirement for sustainable energy provision will become increasingly important over the next fifty years as the environmental effects of fossil fuel use become apparent. Therefore, the issues surrounding integration of renewable energy supplies need to be considered carefully. The focus of this work was the development of an innovative computer aided design of a 3 Dimensional renewable energy platform for Togo’s smart grid power system infrastructure. It demonstrates its validation for industrial, commercial and domestic applications. The Wind, Hydro, and PV system forming our 3 Dimensional renewable energy power generation systems introduces a new path for hybrid systems which extends the system capacities to include, a stable and constant clean energy supply, a reduced harmonic distortion, and an improved power system efficiency. Issues requiring consideration in high percentage renewable energy systems therefore includes the reliability of the supply when intermittent sources of electricity are being used, and the subsequent necessity for storage and back-up generation The adoption of Genetic algorithms in this case was much suited in minimizing the THD as the adoption of the CHB-MLI was ideal for connecting renewable energy sources with an AC grid. Cascaded inverters have also been proposed for use as the main traction drive in electric vehicles, where several batteries or ultra-capacitors are well suited to serve as separate DC sources. The simulation done in various non-linear load conditions showed the proportionality of an integral control based compensating cascaded passive filter thereby balancing the system even in non-linear load conditions. The measured total harmonic distortion of the source currents was found to be 2.36% thereby in compliance with IEEE 519-1992 and IEC 61000-3 standards for harmonics This work has succeeded in developing a more complete tool for analysing the feasibility of integrated renewable energy systems. This will allow informed decisions to be made about the technical feasibility of supply mix and control strategies, plant type, sizing and storage sizing, for any given area and range of supply options. The developed 3D renewable energy platform was examined and evaluated using CAD software analysis and a laboratory base mini test. The initial results showed improvements compared to other hybrid systems and their existing control systems. There was a notable improvement in the dynamic load demand and response, stability of the system with a reduced harmonic distortion. The derivatives of this research therefore proposes an innovative solution and a path for Togo and its intention of switching to renewable energy especially for its smart grid power system infrastructure. It demonstrates its validation for industrial, commercial and domestic applications.

This dissertation addresses the issues of climate change and depletion of non-renewable resources of energy and water, and aims at eliminating the use of non-renewable resources of energy and water for the building operation in single-family detached residences in the U.S. With this aim, this study investigated the feasibility of the off-grid, off-pipe design approach in six climate locations across the U.S. to achieve self-sufficiency in a house for building energy, indoor water use, and household wastewater and sewage disposal using only on-site available renewable resources. For the analysis, a 2,500 ft2, 2000/2001 International Energy Conservation Code standard reference house with typical building and usage characteristics was selected as the base case. The six U.S. climate locations included: Minneapolis, MN, Boulder, CO, Atlanta, GA, Houston, TX, Phoenix, AZ, and Los Angeles, CA. The renewable resources considered for this study included: solar radiation, wind, biomass for building energy needs; rainwater for indoor water use. In addition, the building site was considered for the disposal of household wastewater and sewage. The selected climate locations provided different scenarios in terms of base-case building energy needs and availability of renewable resources. Depending on these, energy and water efficiency measures were selected for reducing the building needs. For the reduced building needs, the sizing of systems for self-sufficiency was performed, including: solar thermal system for building’s space heating and water heating needs, photovoltaic and wind power systems for building’s electricity needs; rainwater harvesting system for indoor water needs; and septic system for the on-site disposal of household wastewater and sewage. In this manner, an integrated analysis procedure was developed for the analysis and design of off-grid, off-pipe homes, and was demonstrated for six U.S. climate locations. The results of the analysis indicated that achieving self-sufficiency for energy, water and sewage disposal was possible is all climates provided the systems for the collection and storage of renewable resources were large. On the other hand, the utilization of these systems was small for locations, where the year-to-year and seasonal variations in the weather conditions and availability of climate resources was large. For increased system utilization, minimization of the peak building needs, utilization of harvested energy for secondary purposes, and considering alternative systems for such applications are preferred.

Renewable energy (RE) resources are relatively unpredictable and dependent on climatic conditions. The negative effects of existing randomness in RE resources can be reduced by the integration of RE resources into what is called Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems (HRES). The design of HRES remains as a complicated problem since there is uncertainty in energy prices, demand, and RE sources. In addition, it is a multi-objective design since several conflicting objectives must be considered. In this thesis, an optimal sizing approach has been proposed to aid decision makers in sizing and performance analysis of this kind of energy supply systems. First, a straightforward methodology based on ε-constraint method is proposed for optimal sizing of HRESs containing RE power generators and two storage devices. The ε-constraint method has been applied to minimize simultaneously the total net present cost of the system, unmet load, and fuel emission. A simulation-based particle swarm optimization approach has been used to tackle the multi-objective optimization problem. In the next step, a Pareto-based search technique, named dynamic multi-objective particle swarm optimization, has been performed to improve the quality of the Pareto front (PF) approximated by the ε-constraint method. The proposed method is examined for a case study including wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, diesel generators, batteries, fuel cells, electrolyzers, and hydrogen tanks. Well-known metrics from the literature are used to evaluate the generated PF. Afterward, a multi-objective approach is presented to consider the economic, reliability and environmental issues at various renewable energy ratio values when optimizing the design of building energy supply systems. An existing commercial apartment building operating in a cold Canadian climate has been described to apply the proposed model. In this test application, the model investigates the potential use of RE resources for the building. Furthermore, the application of plug-in electric vehicles instead of gasoline car for transportation is studied. Comparing model results against two well-known reported multi-objective algorithms has also been examined. Finally, the existing uncertainties in RE and load are explicitly incorporated into the model to give more accurate and realistic results. An innovative and easy to implement stochastic multi-objective approach is introduced for optimal sizing of an HRES. / February 2016

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No. of bitstreams: 1 xavier_bh_me_guara.pdf: 2378192 bytes, checksum: 45cf939c1d65cdb81c77d339bd66b279 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-08-05 / Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis (ANP) / A preocupação com o meio ambiente e com a qualidade do ar têm sido crescente e objeto de diversos estudos. Quanto maior a densidade populacional, maior a necessidade de consumo de energia e consequentemente, maiores os índices de emissões de poluentes. Neste sentido, é essencial a procura por novas fontes e sistemas mais eficientes de geração de energia, a fim de reduzir os níveis de poluição, diminuir o efeito estufa sobre o planeta, e, principalmente, reduzir a dependência de petróleo na matriz energética mundial. Partindo deste conceito e considerando aspectos técnicos, econômicos e ecológicos, neste trabalho analisam-se três casos de cogeração utilizando motores de combustão interna (MCI) operando com gás natural em comparação com biogás e gás de síntese (syngas), ambos provenientes da biomassa. São aplicadas metodologias de pesquisadores renomados, com o objetivo de determinar a eficiência de geração de eletricidade, a eficiência de geração de calor e a eficiência global dos sistemas, e ainda como parte da análise técnica, determinam-se índices de correlação entre a produção térmica e a potência elétrica dos motores, tornando previsível a capacidade de produção de água quente, vapor e água gelada, dependendo da capacidade elétrica do motor a ser utilizado na implantação de sistemas de cogeração. São determinados os custos de geração de eletricidade e calor, período de retorno dos investimentos e posteriormente são estudadas as emissões de CO2, NOx, SOx, MP e o CO2 equivalente para a determinação do indicador de poluição e da eficiência ecológica dos sistemas de cogeração considerados nesta dissertação. Conclui-se com o estudo realizado que os biocombustíveis são uma importante fonte energética que vem ganhando espaço dia a dia. Na análise ambiental, o gás natural perdeu em eficiência ecológica tanto para o biogás como para o gás de síntese, e a análise energética comprovou que não há grandes perdas na utilização de biocombustíveis em substituição ao gás natural. No aspecto econômico, o biogás demonstrou-se como o mais rentável frente aos combustíveis estudados, apresentando rapidez no retorno dos investimentos e baixo custo de produção elétrica e térmica. / The concern with the environment and air quality has increased and subjected to several studies. The higher the population density, the greater the need for energy consumption and therefore higher pollutant emission rates. In this regard, the search for new sources and more efficient systems for power generation is essential in order to reduce pollution levels and the greenhouse effect on the planet, and, most importantly, reduce dependence on oil in the global energy matrix. Based on this concept and considering the technical, economic and ecological aspects, this paper analyzes three cases of cogeneration using internal combustion engines (ICEs) operating with natural gas in comparison with biogas and synthesis gas (syngas), both stemming from biomass. Methodologies from renowned researchers are applied, with the aim of determining the efficiency of electricity generation, heat generation efficiency and the overall efficiency of the systems; furthermore, as part of the technical analysis, we determine correlation coefficients between the thermal production and the power capacity of the engine, making it possible to predict hot, steam and cold water production capacities, depending on the engine power capacity used in the implementation of the cogeneration system. We determine the costs of generating electricity and heat, the payback period and then CO2, NOx, SOx, MP and equivalent CO2 emissions are studied in order to determine the pollution indicator and ecological efficiency of cogeneration systems considered in this thesis. From this study we conclude that the biofuels are an important energy source which is becoming increasingly popular. In the environmental analysis, the natural gas was less ecologically efficient than both the biogas and the syngas, and the technical analysis showed that there are not great losses when using biofuels in place of the natural gas. In the economic analysis, the biogas was the most feasible in comparison with the natural gas and the syngas, with a short payback period and low power and thermal production costs. / PRH/ANP: 2010.4698-0

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Technology: Electrical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology / This research focuses on the predictive current control of multilevel converters with the aim of providing an optimized system for three-phase, multilevel inverters (MLIs) so that the load current and the voltage of the capacitors can be controlled. A model predictive current control algorithm is proposed, specifically directed at the utilisation of power obtained from renewable energy systems (RESs). The model was developed for three-phase, multilevel voltage source inverters (MLVSIs), three-phase, three-level diode-clamped converters (DCCs) and flying capacitor converters (FCCs). In this study the renewable energy systems model is used to investigate system performance when power is supplied to a resistiveinductive load (RL-load). The proposed control method was split into two different control algorithms. Firstly, a finite set-model predictive current control (FS-MPCC) method was developed to control the output current of three-phase, MLIs. This control method was selected to reduce the calculation effort for model predictive control (MPC) and to increase the possible prediction horizon. Secondly, to solve the flying capacitor voltage balance problem in an FCC, as well as to solve the DC-link capacitor voltage balance problem in a DCC, a hysteresis-voltage alancing algorithm based on predictive control, was designed—this algorithm was used to keep the flying capacitor voltages and DC-link capacitor voltages within their hysteresis bands. Finally, for some classes of power converters, a performance evaluation of the FS-MPCC method for three-phase, three-level MLIs was investigated in terms of power quality and dynamic response. The improvement was assessed in terms of total harmonic distortion (THD) of the output voltage for the RL-load. The modelling and co-simulation were carried out using MATLAB/Simulink with PSIM software. The co-simulation results indicated that the proposed control algorithms achieved both high performance and a high degree of robustness in RESs applications.