Control strategy of solar/wind energy power plant with supercapacitor energy storage for smart DC microgrid

Abstract

This paper presents an original control algorithm for a hybrid energy system with a renewable energy source: a photovoltaic (PV) array and a wind turbine (WD). A single storage device, a supercapacitor (SC) module, is in the proposed structure. The very fast power response and high specific power of a SC complements the insufficient power output of the main sources to produce the compatibility and performance characteristics needed in a load. To verify the proposed principle, a hardware system is realized with analog circuits and with numerical calculation (dSPACE) for the energy control loops. Experimental results with small-scale devices, namely, a wind turbine generator (500 W), a photovoltaic array (800 W, 31 A) manufactured by the Ekarat Solar Company and a SC module (100 F, 32 V), illustrate the excellent energy-management scheme during load cycles.