Efficient Energy Management System for Solar Energy

Abstract

Solar power is the major renewable energy source opted by developing countries as stand-alone/Grid enabled system. Industries and educational institutions are opting for solar energy to combat power crisis. This paper proposes knowledge based, self configurable, smart controller to efficiently use solar energy according to load, under frequent grid failure environment. It is enabled with fault identification and isolation. Extension to higher power capacity is easily achieved with plug and play mechanism. Proposed control architecture is implemented using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), that supports modular level implementation with well defined interfaces for each sub-system. It can be used with low power as well as high power photo-voltaic system. Efficiency of the proposed architecture is demonstrated for the photo-voltaic system installed in educational institution.

Solarna energija spada među glavne obnovljive izvore energije odabrana od strane zemalja u razvoju kao samostalnih izvora ili umrežene s ostalim izvorima. Industrija i edukacijske institucije predlažu solarnu energiju u borbi protiv energetske krize. U ovome radu predstavljen je samokonfigurabilan regulator za efikasno korištenje solarne energije s obzirom na opterećenje i česte promjene u mreži. To je omogućeno uz identifikaciju kvara. Ekstenzija na visoke snage jednostavno se postiže sa uređajem koji se može odmah koristiti. Regulator je implementiran koristeći programirljive logičke sklopove (FPGA) koji podržavaju modularnu implementaciju svake razine sa sučeljem prema svakom podsustavu. Predloženi sustav može biti korišten za niske snage kao i za visoke snage kod fotonaponskih sustava. Efikasnost predložene arhitekture testirana je na fotonaponskom sustavu postavljenom na edukacijskoj instituciji.

Key words:

• Field Programmable Gate Array
• Photo-voltaic system
• Pulse width modulation
• Stand alone system

Ključne riječi:

• programirljivi logički sklopovi
• fotonaponski sustav
• pulsno-širinska modulacija
• samostalni sustav

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J. Kamala

Kamala J. received her B.E. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Madurai Kamaraj University in 1989, M.E. degree in VLSI Design from Bharathidasan University, in 2002 and Ph.D from Anna University, Chennai, India in 2011. She is currently working as Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Anna University, Chennai, India. Her research includes VLSI implementation, Power Electronics, Solar power controllers and Smart sensors.

K. Santhosh

Santhosh K. received his BE degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Anna University, Tirunelveli, and ME degree in VLSI design from Anna University Chennai in 2011 and 2014 respectively. He is currently working as an Assistant professor at IIET Chennai. His research area includes Power Electronics and VLSI RF circuits.