Design of Automatic Control System for Hybrid Energy Sources in Rural Areas

The authors of this paper have focused on designing a control system for hybrid renewable energy sources for rural areas, with automatic power switching from grid to the hybrid system, in the case of low voltage or power outages. Villages in India are considered to be electrified if 10% of the houses present have an access to power supply, and rudimentary electrical infrastructure has been established. Nonetheless, power cuts result in villages getting less than 12 hours of supply. Hence resorting to other sources of energy such as wind, solar, bio-fuel, etc. becomes a necessity. By measuring the state of charge (SoC) of batteries corresponding to each of the hybrid sources, switching of energy sources can be automated using a control system that would work with threshold values. When one power supply source fails, the supply automatically shifts to the next priority source. Keeping in mind that the proposed system has been mainly designed to be set up in rural areas, it's worth mentioning that one of the main advantages of the design is that it does not depend on the internet for its working. Hence, the goal of this project is to provide a continuous power supply to rural areas with the help of a control system using hybrid energy sources.