Private solar power supply system

It consists of photovoltaic (PV) array and wind turbine (WT), pumped hydro storage, end-user and control station. The whole system is isolated from the utility grid, hence called standalone/autonomous system, aiming for remote areas where utility extension is very expensive or impossible.

In summary, 52% of the energy demand was covered by PV panels, 2% by wind turbine and 46% by the energy storage system. In such a way, the combined system contributes a continuous power supply. In addition, below the zero line in Fig. 10 represents the charging power, totally provided by the PV surplus power (38% of PV production).

The purpose of this study is to optimize the system design of a proposed hybrid solar–wind-pumped storage system in standalone mode for an isolated microgrid of a scale of a few hundred kW. The initial design process of the system's major components is presented, and then optimized based on a techno-economic evaluation.

Therefore, to design an optimal power supply system, a combination of wind and solar energy should be considered. In addition, energy balance analysis indicates that the overall efficiency of the pumped storage was 52.5%. Sensitivity analysis shows that the key contribution to system cost was the load demand.

The study has demonstrated that the feasibility of hybrid solar–wind energy system heavily depends on solar radiation and wind energy availability at the site, and the cost of the PV panels and wind turbines.

However, the benefit of just that adding one wind turbine was significant, in that it made such a hybrid system more economically and technically viable. Therefore, to design an optimal power supply system, a combination of wind and solar energy sources should be considered. Wind powered pumped storage was also studied.