Optimal PI controller of DVR to enhance the performance of hybrid power system feeding a remote area in Egypt

• Published in: Sustainable cities and society 2019-05, Vol.47, p.101469, Article 101469
• Main Authors: Mosaad, Mohamed I., Abed El-Raouf, M. Osama, Al-Ahmar, Mahmoud A., Bendary, Fahmy M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cuckoo search (CS); Dynamic voltage restorer (DVR); Fuel cell; Hybrid system; Photovoltaic (PV); Wind turbine
• ISSN: 2210-6707; 2210-6715
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scs.2019.101469

•Hybrid renewable energy system for feeding a new community.•Sustainable cities and new communities.•Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR).•Optimal PI controllers.•Cuckoo search optimization technique.•The enhancement of the off-grid hybrid power system. This article proposes optimal PI controllers of Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR) to enhance the performance of stand-alone hybrid renewable energy system that is feeding a new community located in Egypt. The hybrid system includes three renewable energy sources, namely, solar PV cells, wind turbines based permanent magnet synchronous generator and fuel cells. These three sources are connected to a common DC link by three boost converters, one for each source. The common DC link is integrated to the AC loads via DC/AC inverter. The optimal size of the three proposed renewable sources is obtained using the HOMER software package. The main contribution of this study is designing optimal PI controller for DVR for enhancing the performance of a hybrid PV-wind-fuel cell. Two PI controllers are used to regulate the IGBT pulses of the voltage source inverter (VSI) driving DVR by adjusting the D-Q axes voltage signals. The D-Q axis components of the load voltage represent the inputs to the two PI controllers respectively. While the D-Q axis voltage signals driving the IGBT pulses of the DVR-VSI IGBT are the outputs of the two PI controllers respectively. A Cuckoo Search (CS), as an optimization technique is used for determining the optimal PI control parameters used to drive the DVR at different operating conditions. To validate the effectiveness of the DVR based PI-CS control, four test scenarios are investigated includes (three phase fault, sag, swell and unbalance voltage conditions). The enhancement of the system performance is achieved through improving the voltage, the current and the power waveforms for each source, improving the dynamic performance of the wind turbine generator and keeping the continuous operation of the three sources during faulty conditions. The proposed system is modeled using MATLAB/Simulink.