Design and Optimization of Wind-PV-Battery Hybrid System

Abstract

The complementarity in the nature of wind speed and solar radiation makes the wind-photovoltaic hybrid combination a preferred option in comparison to wind-battery systems. Such a combination can serve to reduce the storage capacity and increase the system availability. The design and optimization of such systems need incorporation of both wind and solar resource availability at the location. The system design variables are the wind turbine rating, blade diameter, photovoltaic array rating and the battery bank capacity. A method to optimally size and to evaluate the cost of energy produced by a wind-photovoltaic-battery system is demonstrated with an illustrative example. It is shown that inclusion of a photovoltaic generator serves to reduce the minimum wind turbine diameter requirement from about 14–60% and the wind generator rating from 20% to 70% in relation to a wind-battery system. The proposed method based on the design space approach can be used to determine the conditions for which hybridization of the system is cost effective.