Optimal Sizing of Hybrid Micro Grid System Using PSO Technique for Rural Electrification

Advancement in the infrastructure development of a country mainly decides the economic development of the nation. The infrastructure development on prime fields like Energy, transport, communications and water will promotes the growth of the country. Especially, the access to electricity will create more positive impact in the socio-economic conditions through its influence on significant parameters of poverty, health, education, and environment. But the rural parts are still not connected in the electricity infrastructure and it’s a significant barrier for the rural growth. The costs associated with the extension of energy infrastructure like installation of towers, transmission lines and grid extensions are the key challenges in rural electrification. Hence the utilization of available renewable energy resources and micro grid is a smart choice for rural electrification. The need of coordination between various energy resources coupled in the grid makes the design process as a complicated task. The optimal sizing of the components is very essential one for effective utilization of the resources connected in the micro grid. In this paper, optimal sizing of a hybrid micro grid system that comprises of photovoltaic generator (PV), wind turbine, Diesel generator and battery bank is performed. The hourly data of solar irradiation, ambient temperature, wind speed, power produced by the photovoltaic generator, wind turbine and diesel are collected. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is chosen for computation of optimal number of PV panels, Wind turbines, Diesel generator and Batteries for a year load demand with minimal installation cost under the constraint of the loss of power supply probability (LPSP). The MATLAB simulation on optimal sizing of the micro grid was demonstrated to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approaches and obtained results are presented and discussed.