A STUDY ON THE CONFIGURATIONS OF STANDALONE RENEWABLE ENERGY AS DC MICROGRID SOURCES FOR RURAL AREA

• Main Author: DAYANGKU KHAIRUNESA, AWG. SAKAWI
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS) 2019
• Subjects: TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/34308/1/A%20STUDY%20ON%20THE%20CONFIGURATIONS%20OF%20STANDALONE%20RENEWABLE24pgs.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/34308/4/A%20STUDY%20ON%20THE%20CONFIGURATIONS%20OF%20STANDALONE%20RENEWABLEft.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/34308/

The state of Sarawak has the lowest electricity coverage in the rural areas as compared to the other states in Malaysia. Due to the variable tropical climate in Sarawak, getting reliable power supply is an issue when solar Photovoltaic (PV) systems are connected to the microgrids. The existing microgrid power supply based solar PV systems in the longhouse communities of Sarawak poses many problems mainly cause by the stages of conversion, energy losses and the quality of power transfer. The introduction of a renewable energy system that will serve as a remedy towards Sarawak electrification issue where it has the lowest electricity coverage in rural areas as compared to other states in Malaysia due to its geographical condition and low electricity demand. This report will assist on direct current (DC) microgrid system issue by conducting a study on standalone solar DC microgrid configuration with different DC distribution levels and configuration namely, ring and radial. The solar PV topologies for DC microgrid have been modeled and dynamically analyzed using MATLAB. Additionally, each configuration has experimentally been validated to measure the parameters such as voltages, currents and power losses. The obtained results show that the configuration of ring connection is more 3reliable than radial connection. The outcome of this study is the backbone of developing an approach to control the power losses in an isolated DC microgrid from the main grid, which is suggested for our future works.