Cloud induced PV impact on voltage profiles for smart microgrids

Abstract

In the history of humanity, no other invention has positively influenced everyone's life as much as the invention of electrical energy. With the electricity, the rise of civilization gained momentum, industrial technologies advanced, and scientific developments found more suitable habitat for themselves. However, in order to meet the growing demand for electricity, production costs had to be reduced. In this direction, the energy sector used fossil fuel-based solutions for cheap electricity production. However, nowadays, a tendency to use cleaner and more sustainable methods for electricity production has occurred since fossil fuel sources are limited and they increase the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. This trend brings renewable energy resources (RER) to the table as a new solution, especially in the modern electricity networks. However, since behaviors of the RERs are challenging to forecast and highly dependent on environmental factors, these resources have some severe problems in the integration into the grid, particularly in the low voltage networks, such as microgrids. In this thesis, the impact of the fluctuations in photovoltaic power (PV) generation, which happens because of frequently interrupted solar radiance by the chaotic movements of the clouds, on the load voltage levels of a real field microgrid system belonging to the Malta College of Arts Science and Technology (MCAST) campus is investigated. Also, the impact of the auxiliary sources (battery storage system and diesel generator) that are responsible for ensuring that the microgrid healthily continues its operation on the load voltage profiles is presented. The author used the MATLAB/Simulink platform for the necessary simulations and system designs