The 5th International Power Engineering and Optimization Conference (PEOCO2011), Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia : 6-7 June

2011

Feasibility of Hybrid Power Generation over Wind

and Solar Standalone System
Khurshid Hasan, Kaniz Fatima and Md. Sohel mahmood

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Bangladesh University of Engineering and technology (BUET)
Dhaka – 1000, Bangladesh

Abstract— The rapid diminishing rate of gas and oil is alarming usually consists of two or more energy generating sources
us to think about alternative sources. Renewable energy is a together to provide increased system efficiency as well as
better solution to this problem and technologies of extracting greater balance in energy supply [11]. Solar and wind energy
energy from renewable energy sources are being upgraded day as a hybrid renewable energy system can attenuate
by day. Our target was to find out the optimum renewable
energy source giving best possible power generation. In our
fluctuations in power and thereby reduce significantly the
research we analyzed the feasibility of power generation using energy storage requirements [10, 12]. Such systems are
wind and solar energy. For wind property analysis we have used extensively useful for small community, farm, optical cable
Windowgrapher and for cost analysis we have used Homer. The transmission and railroad communication. They also serve as
aim of the study was to analyze the solar and wind useful power generating sources for remote areas and troops
characteristics and selecting a suitable location where both solar on desert, islands and mobile facilities. With battery storage
and wind energy are strong enough for hybrid power generation and inverter hybrid solar-wind generators can provide
and choosing suitable PV module and wind turbine for this continuous power supply throughout the day in the remotest
purpose. We analyzed the beneficiary impact of this hybrid locations.
power extraction strategy on our environment and national
economy and found that this new technique adaptation can
In [11] methodology to optimize a hybrid solar
really be useful in off shore islands and high rise buildings of photovoltaic-wind turbine generator for the villages situated
our country. in the coastal regions of India was developed. In [8] the
feasibility of a stand-alone PV/Wind/Diesel hybrid system for
Keywords- Renewable energy, solar, wind, windrose, hybrid etc. providing electricity to an ‘Ice house’ in the Pacific Island
was studied. A feasible system is defined as a solution or
I. INTRODUCTION Hybrid system configuration which is capable of meeting the
The increasing need for energy is warning us and making required load [13]. However, this aspect has not been
us to think about alternative energy sources rather than considered yet for Bangladesh.
conventional energy sources which are going to be exhausted This paper analyses the feasibility of hybrid power
by the end of this century but the world energy requirement is generation over wind and solar stand-alone system from the
projected to double by 2050 and triple by 2100 [1]. This acute perspective of Bangladesh. A system has been proposed to
power crisis and environmental problems associated with the optimize available natural resources, net present cost (NPC),
burning of fossil fuel and the medium and its long term initial capital, cost of energy (COE) and renewable fraction.
supply, particularly oil and gas, make the move toward The proposed system ensures the absence of zero power
renewable energy economy both desirable and necessary [2]. generation interval and provides environment friendly green
Renewable energy technologies offer important benefits energy by lowering CO2 and other green house gas emissions.
compared to those of conventional energy sources [3]. For Bangladesh it is of utmost importance to turn to green
Global environmental concerns and the ever increasing power since the natural resources are limited and are being
need for energy, coupled with a steady progress in renewable exhausted more rapidly.
energy technologies are opening up new opportunities for
II. ANALYSIS METHOD
utilization of renewable energy resources [4]. A number of
studies have shown that renewable energy based hybrid A. Windowgrapher
systems offer attractive and a more practical approach to meet Windowgrapher is a wind data analysis program. It reads
electrical power needs in rural communities around the globe raw data files, does advanced statistical processing of the data,
[5-8]. produces a variety of graphs for visualizing the data, and
In [9] it was found that in remote areas the use of either PV provides tools for quality control of the data [14].
or wind turbine alone does not produce usable energy for
considerable portion of time during the year. In general, the B. Homer
variations of solar insolation and wind kinetic energy do not HOMER means “Hybrid Optimization Model for Energy
match with the time distribution of demand. In [10] it is Renewables”. The HOMER software contains a number of
found that for higher reliability the independent use of either energy component models and evaluates suitable technology
PV or wind turbine results in considerable over-sizing which options based on cost and availability of resources [15].
in turn makes the design costlier. A Hybrid energy system

978-1-4577-0354-6/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE

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Analysis requires information on resources, economic
constraints, and control methods. It also requires inputs on
component types their numbers, costs, efficiency, longevity
etc [16]. When provided with all these information then the
software can produce a categorized list of feasible options [8].

III. WIND ENERGY ANALYSIS

The LGED (Local Government Engineering Department)
of Bangladesh provided us with the wind data for six regions
named Kuaktata, Kutubdia, Khagrachori, Sitakundu, Nawga
and Pakshi from June 2005 to June 2007. After analysing the
wind speed, its standard deviation and direction using Fig. 1 Seasonal Wind Speed Profile
Windowgrapher we found that mean and median wind speed
Monthly Statistics for Speed at 20m
of Kuaktata, Kutubdia and Sitakunda are higher compared to 25
the other three regions. Then we checked certain properties of max
daily high
wind in these three regions and the results are summarized in 20
mean
Table I. daily low

Value (m/s)
15 min

TABLE I 10
OVERALL COMPARISON AT 20 METER HEIGHT

Windographer Kuakata Kutubdia Sitakundu 5

Parameter
0
Mean Wind 4.17 3.65 3.70 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Ann
Speed (m/s) Fig. 2 Monthly Box Plot Wind Speed Profile at 20m height for Kuakata
Median Wind 3.74 3.19 3.39
Speed (m/s)
Mean Power 83 56.0 73 Fig. 1 shows the variation of wind speed at two different
Density(W/m2) heights for Kuakata. From this we find that the wind speed is
Mean Energy 725 494 636 higher from April to September in this region.
Content B. Box Plot Analysis
(kWh/m2/day)
Hour of Peak 18 16 16 Box Plot wind speed profile gives us the mean, maximum,
Wind Speed and minimum wind speed of a location with respect to month.
The higher the value of mean wind speed, the better the place
Standard 2.05 1.85 2.06
is for wind energy extraction.
Deviation
Fig. 2 shows that the mean wind speed for Kuakata is
Median Wind 3.74 3.19 3.39
higher from April to September.
Speed (m/s)
C. Wind Speed Rose Analysis
From Table I we observe that the mean and median wind Wind Speed Rose shows the mean (average) value of a
speed for Kuakata is 4.17 m/s and 3.74 m/s respectively. The particular data column wind direction. Presented in a circular
mean power density, mean energy content and hour of peak format, the wind rose shows the frequency of winds blowing
wind speed values are also high over here. from particular directions.
Wind speed is a crucial element in projecting turbine From Fig. 3 we find that in the month of April wind
performance. Generally, an annual average wind speed blowing from the west direction tend to be the strongest
greater than four meters per second (m/s) (9 mph) is required averaging more than 5.6 m/s and wind blowing from the
for small wind electric turbines. Utility-scale wind power south-east direction tend to be the lowest averaging less than
plants require minimum average wind speeds of 6 m/s (13 2.8 m/s. From the Fig. 3 we also see that the maximum wind
mph). Thus considering all these factors we finally selected speed and direction varies with time.
Kuakata as the most suitable place for power extraction from
wind energy in Bangladesh. Hence further analyses were D. Wind Scatter Plotting
performed focussing on Kuakata. The wind scatter plot shows another kind of polar plot,
A. Seasonal Wind Speed Profile drawing a small X mark for every data point. When the
frequency of wind flow is higher from a direction the number
Seasonal wind speed profile includes the wind speed of X mark increases there.
variation of a region during a season i.e. from January to
December.

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 Fig. 5 Average daily solar Radiation

In the above analysis of Fig. 5, on power extraction from

solar resources, we have found that Solar Radiation is varied
from 3.3-5.5 kWh/m2/day in Bangladesh. It is also higher
from February to September. We have also got the variation
of the clearness index parameter. When the value of clearness
index increases the amount of extractable energy from solar
radiation also increases. We also found the average solar
radiation to be 4.2016 kWh/m2/day, which is sufficient for
power extraction using solar resources. So we conclude upon
saying that Bangladesh is rich with solar resources.

V. DISADVANTAGE OF SINGLE ENERGY SOURCE

A. Solar Photovoltaic (PV) System Alone
ƒ The solar radiation varies over time and is dependent
on environmental conditions (temperature, irradiance,
Fig. 3 Monthly Wind Speed Rose at 20m height for Kuakata from April to etc.). Thus it becomes tough to get an average
September. generation all though the year [18].

Scatterplot of Speed at 20m ƒ At night we cannot have the solar energy supply so
0° we have to go for battery storage. If due to the rainy
330° 30°
conditions or some other natural disaster we do not
300° 60° have solar for sufficient time we will not be able to
store the battery. Thus the system will not supply us
with power in these conditions.
270° 90°

8 m/s B. Wind Energy Generation System Alone

240°
16 m/s
120° ƒ The irregular nature of wind in our country does not
24 m/s
give us a consistent power generation.
210° 150°
180°
ƒ The average wind velocity is 3.5-4.5 m/s which is not
Fig. 4 Scatter Plot of Wind Speed at 20m Height for Kuakata. sufficient for standalone system.
From Fig. 4 we can say that the wind flowing from west-
south direction is more frequent than the other directions. So,
after performing all these analyses, we arrive at a conclusion VI. PROPOSED DESIGN CRITERIA
that although Kuakata is the most suitable place for energy We have designed four 50 kW grid connected systems
extraction using wind in Bangladesh, according to seasonal having the following criteria to find out the optimum solution
wind speed profile and boxplot analysis average wind speed for power generation using renewable energy sources.
here is 4 m/s or above only from April to September. Thus
during this specific period we can extract sufficient power
from wind in this region. However, according to the result of TABLE II
wind speed rose analysis and wind scatter plot it is clearly 50 KW SYSTEM DESIGN
evident that flow of wind does not follow a regular pattern.
System PV Wind Generator
Criteria Panel (kW) (kW)
IV. SOLAR ENERGY ANALYSIS (kW)
The average daily solar Radiation on whole month basis all System 1 20 20 10
through the year of Bangladesh is given below [17]. System 2 40 _ 10
System 3 _ 40 10
System 4 _ _ 50

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A. Hardware Used From Table VII it is conspicuous that System 4, which is
I. Solar PV Part completely dependent on diesel, requires a high net present
Solar module: Kyocera (Multi Crystalline) cost (NPC) and cost per unit production. So System 4 is
rejected. For System 2, the initial cost and NPC is also high
with respect to System 1 and System 3. So we conclude that
TABLE III we cannot go for System 2. The available options are System
SOLAR PV PANEL COST DATA [19] 1 and System 3.
Capital Replacement O&M
Size(W)
($/unit) ($/unit) ($/yr/unit) VII. WHY HYBRID EXCEPT WIND
210 842 842 20.83
A. Problems with System 3
II. Wind Turbine Part [20] With wind energy as the only renewable source for power
Model Name: Upwind Turbine extraction in System 3 we face the following problems.
Rated Power Output: 1000W (600W / 12v Version) ƒ The system has to be very much site specific. As in
Rated wind speed: 12.5m/s our country we have got high wind speed only in the
Cut-in wind speed: 3.2m/s coastal regions and the islands. As a result this will
Start-Up Wind Speed: 2.5m/s not serve us in the main field.
Price: $ 1,184.00 INC VAT ƒ From wind rose analysis we see that wind speed and
direction vary seasonally. For optimum output power
III. Battery Part [21] generation one needs to set the turbine perpendicular
Model Name: Trozan T-105 to the maximum wind speed direction. In that case we
Nominal Capacity: 225Ah shall need to design mobile wind turbine unit which
Nominal Voltage: 6V is not feasible and implementable for a poor country
like ours.
TABLE IV B. Advantages with System 1
BATTERY COST DATA [21]
ƒ During the winter and rainy season when there is less
Capital Replacement O&M amount of solar radiation available then the wind can
Quantity supply a considerable amount of energy.
($/unit) ($/unit) ($/yr/unit)
1 155.72 155.72 2.00 ƒ Due to the seasonal variation, if there is a scarcity of
sufficient wind speed for power generation then PV
IV. Converter Part panel can provide us with the power.
Model Name: XANTREX, Made in USA, [22] C. Optimum System Choice
Finally we conclude upon saying that even though
TABLE V System 1, i.e. the hybrid system, has a higher per unit
CONVERTER COST DATA [22] production cost but it utilizes the available resources in an
Size Capital Replacement O&M optimized way. Besides System 1 can also arrange the
(kW) ($/unit) ($/unit) ($/yr) undesired or accidental conditions. So for optimum power
1.000 980.00 980.00 10 generation we must go for Hybrid Power generation.

V. Generator Part
Model Name: Westerbeke 10kW Diesel Generator, [23]

TABLE VI
VIII. FURTHER RESEARCH
GENERATOR COST DATA [23]
ƒ Generator Scheduling:
Size Capital Replacement O&M
Depending on the availability of wind and solar
(kW) ($/unit) ($/unit) ($/yr)
energy we can schedule the diesel generator i.e.
10 12424 12424 1192
when renewable sources are available the generator
is kept off and it is run only when it is required to
TABLE VII fulfil the load requirement.
COST COMPARISON ƒ Renewable Fraction Increment:
The ratio of power generated from renewable
Characteristics System System System System
1 2 3 4
sources to the total power generation is called
Initial capital 203562 254824 146216 62120 renewable fraction. As its value increases, the
($) system becomes more and more renewable energy
Total NPC 474139 973359 192975 1447352 dependent.
($) ƒ Optimization of system cost
Cost of Energy 0.071 0.145 0.029 0.216 Depending on the area specific criteria and
($/kWh) availability of renewable energy sources, the
Renewable 0.64 0.12 0.78 0.00 combination of hybrid power generation can be
Fraction optimized.

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