On-grid hybrid wind/photovoltaic/fuel cell energy system

In this paper, development and simulation of an efficient small-scale centralized dc-bus grid connected hybrid wind/photovoltaic/fuel cell for supplying power to a low voltage distribution system are presented. The hybrid system consists of wind and photovoltaic as a primary power system. A fuel cell is added as a secondary system to ensure continuous power supply and to take care of the intermittent nature of wind and photovoltaic. The objective of this study is to design and control a hybrid system that guarantees the energy continuity. A simple control method is applied to the proposed configuration to simultaneously achieve three desired goals: to extract maximum power from each hybrid power system component; to guarantee dc bus voltage regulation at the input of the inverter; and to transfer the total produced power to the grid at unity power factor, while fulfilling all necessary interconnection requirements. The simulation results indicate that the dc-dc converters are very effective in tracking the maximum power of the wind and photovoltaic sources, the fuel cell controller responds efficiently to the deficit power demands.