A simulation and simple optimization of a wind-solar-hydro micro power source with a battery bank as an energy storage device

AGH University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, Cracow, Poland

^* Corresponding author: jakubkamiljurasz@gmail.com

Abstract

Renewable energy sources (RES) are not the backbone of the Polish electricity generation sector. Even though the use of such resources is beneficial in terms of, e.g., CO₂ emissions, current policy seems to create more and more obstacles hindering their further development on an industrial scale. The present paper proposes a simulation model of a hybrid micro power source coupled with a battery bank supplying a small group of households with an annual energy demand of 30 MWh. Results indicate that, for the selected site, a power source consisting of a wind turbine – 8kW, photovoltaic array – 9kW, water turbine – 2kW and 256 kWh energy storage capacity of a battery bank can be a reliable energy source. However, due to the intermittent nature of the selected energy sources there is still a need to remain on-grid in order to avoid excessive energy surpluses (in the case of an oversized system) and deficits. This work opens several interesting directions for future studies, which will be discussed in later sections.