Solar and Wind power based hybrid system using arduino
Abstract
One of the primary needs for socio-economic development in any nation in the world is the provision of reliable electricity supply systems with lower carbon footprint levels. The purpose of this work is the development of a Solar-Wind hybrid Power system that harnesses the renewable energies in Sun and Wind to generate electricity. The results show that the site is abundant in renewable energy and the hybrid nature increases the reliability and reduces the dependence on one single source.
As the wind does not blow throughout the day and the sun does not shine for the entire day, using a single source will not be a suitable choice. A hybrid arrangement of combining the power harnessed from both the wind and the sun and stored in a battery can be a much more reliable and realistic power source. The load can still be powered using the stored energy in the batteries even when there is no sun or wind. Hybrid systems are usually built for design of systems with lowest possible cost and also with maximum reliability. The high cost of solar PV cells makes it less competent for larger capacity designs. This is where the wind turbine comes into the picture, the main feature being its cheap cost as compared to the PV cells. Battery system is needed to store solar and wind energy produced during the day time. During night time, the presence of wind is an added advantage, which increases the reliability of the system. In the monsoon seasons, the effect of sun is less at the site and thus it is apt to use a hybrid wind solar system. In addition to the technical considerations, cost benefit is a factor that has to be incorporated into the process of optimizing a hybrid energy system. In general, the use of wind energy is cheaper than that of solar energy. The solar-wind hybrid system is more cost-effective and reliable when wind is taken as a source. Fig. shows the block diagram of the hybrid system.
