Model of a Hybrid Renewable Energy System:

Control, Supervision and Energy Distribution

Dada Delimustafic, Jasmina Islambegovic, Abdulah Aksamovic and Semsudin Masic
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
University of Sarajevo, 71000 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Email: {dd14509, ji14589, abdulah.aksamovic, semsudin.masic}@etf.unsa.ba

AbstractThis paper presents a concept design of a hybrid

renewable energy system (HRES). The proposed HRES design
specifies the operation of the following units: a pumped-storage
hydro power plant, a wind power plant and a solar power
plant. Since the pumped-storage hydro power plant represents
the most complex entity of the HRES, special emphasis is placed
on its two control loops: the water tank level control loop
and the load-depended frequency control loop. Models of these
control loops provide the means for efficient controller design and
implementation. In order to achieve effective energy distribution
and reliable power supply of the consumers, a switch logic
architecture has been developed. Since the HRESs final energy
production highly depends on the process of energy conversion,
the performances of three types of power converters are analysed.
This includes the parametrisation, modelling and simulation of
such converters. Finally, a graphical user interface (GUI) for
purposes of data monitoring, control and supervision within
the designed SCADA system, is presented. The proposed HRES
design represents the foundation of the system implementation
that aims at serving as a platform for research, education and a
broad range of projects on renewable energy.

I. I NTRODUCTION
As the worlds energy consumption increases due to population growth and the ever evolving industrialisation process,
mankind faces the challenge of preventing resource depletion.
Renewable energy sources have proven to be an efficient
alternative for conventional energy production based on nonrenewable resources, mainly fossil fuels [1], [2]. Although we
will continue to rely on non-renewable energy sources for most
of our energy needs, the use of alternative sources of energy is
expected to expand even more so over the next few decades.
Since the future large-scale usage of renewable energy is
a worldwide priority [3], intense research is being conducted
on the integration of renewable energy sources into existing
power generation systems and the substitution of fossil fuelbased power generation with renewable power supply. Several
critical factors have been identified that make such integration
and substitution possible, one of them being the obvious
need for trained workforce [4]. Because of this, incorporating
renewable energy education into the course syllabi of educational institutions remains an important issue.
Zahedi [5] developed a multilevel undergraduate course
dealing with the principles of renewable energy. The purpose
is teaching renewable energy and environmental technology
by means of lectures and tutorial sessions using computer
simulation packages. Ortiz-Rivera et al. [6], provided the study

978-1-4244-9312-8/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

of three alternative sources: photovoltaic systems, fuel cells

and thermoelectric generators for undergraduate students. To
perform circuit analysis and simulation the students were
given behavioural models that emulate the typical electrical
characteristics of those energy sources. The research culture
emerged from the model studies resulted in the growth of the
renewable energy development research team, with the number
of members increasing from 1 to 12 during the course of three
years.
The construction of a grid-tied hybrid demonstration system
consisting of a 2 kW solar (PV) array and a 2 kW wind turbine
is discussed in [7]. The objective was to create an example
facility to demonstrate affordable and effective sustainable energy generation options. Data values collected during the first
year of the systems operation indicated that the average total
energy generation was 221 kWh/month, enough to supply a
small building. A similar system design was proposed by Wies
et al. [8], in the form of a standalone distributed generation
system integrating existing fossil fuel based energy sources
with renewable energy sources and smart grid technologies
for off-grid communities. The projects discussed in [7] and
[8] were realised within undergraduate and graduate course
frameworks encouraging student research on renewable energy
through working with an actual system.
In this work we propose a HRES design that combines
power generation from hydro generators, wind generators
and photovoltaic panels.1 Local measurement, control and
microcomputer monitoring is realised for each of the system
units. The microcomputers form a computer controlled unitary
network. A configured network connection allows for monitoring and control of the system from distant locations. The
notably multidisciplinary nature of the HRES operation offers
possibility for extensive research. The scheduled implementation of the herein presented concepts aims at serving as an
educational demo system upon which student research can be
carried out.
The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. In
Section II, the developed system configuration is presented,
with special attention directed toward the control design for
the pumped-storage hydro power plant. Power converter design
with respect to the given requirements is discussed in Section
1 The presented HRES design is aimed to be implemented within a model
framework scheduled to be constructed at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Sarajevo, B&H.

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Fig. 2. Water level control loop: The water level is kept at the set value
of = 2 m. The PID controller reacts to level variations detected by the
ultrasonic sensor by adjusting the centrifugal pumps angular velocity.

The upper tank model realises the connection between the

current water level h and the water flow Q provided by the
centrifugal pump. The dynamical dependence between h and
Q can easily be obtained as:

Fig. 1. System configuration: MAN represents the Metropiltan Area Network

that provides power supply for the feeder network in case the HRESs energy
production is insufficient.

III, while Section IV presents a solution for effective energy

distribution using a switch logic architecture. Section V goes
into detail about the proposed SCADA system specification.
Concluding remarks are given in Section VI.
II. SYSTEM DESIGN
The designed HRES derives 3 kW of installed capacity
from three power generating units: a 1.8 kW pumped-storage
hydro power plant, a 600 W wind power plant and a 600 W
solar power plant. Each of these units is composed of three
substations equal in construction. The produced energy is
transmitted from built-in accumulators to feeders via a distribution network composed of indispensable power converters
and circuit breakers. The system configuration is shown in
Fig. 1. It is important to stress that our choice of the pumpedstorage hydro power plant is based on its interesting nature
that can be subject to student research, despite it not being an
energy efficient solution.
A. Pumped-storage hydro power plant: Level control
The pumped-storage hydro power plant operation is defined
by the control of two quantities: the water level in the upper
tank and the output voltage frequency. Water stored in the
upper tank flows through the hydro power plant to generate
electricity. Used water flows into the lower tank from where
it is being pumped into the upper tank. By controlling the
water level in the upper tank we ensure satisfactory energy
production. The Simulink model of the water level control
loop is shown in Fig. 2.

d ()
+ 6 = (),
d

(1)

where a, b and A define the tanks geometric characteristics.2

The leakage factor depends upon the construction of the tank
orifices through which the water flows out, and is defined as
[11]:

1
.
(2)
=
1+
The coefficient of contraction and the loss coefficient have
been computed with respect to the orifice shape. The orifice
size has been computed in order to fulfil given requirements
regarding the water level and flow. In a stationary state the
desired values of these parameters are = 2 m and =
3
0.03 , respectively.
The centrifugal pump is modelled as a cascade connection
of an electrical and a hydraulic unit. The electrical unit
emulates the pumps motor characteristics and is modelled as
a first order system. The hydraulic unit that models the linear
dependence of the flow upon the pumps angular velocity, is
given by:
(3)
() = (),
where is a constant by means of which flow and frictional
losses are taken into account [9].
The specific values of the model parameters have been
obtained from data sheets of the system components. The
tuning of the PID controller with the transfer function () =
(1 + 1 + ), was performed using the root locus technique. Fig. 3 shows the system performance for the obtained
values of the controller parameters: = 85, = 0, 01 s,
= 0, 13 s.
B. Frequency control
Since changes in the connected feeder network effect the
frequency of the hydro power plants output voltage, a frequency control loop has been designed to ensure the stability

that the term 6 results from the fact that the upper tank contains
three identical output orifices through which water flows to three water
turbines.

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2 Note

2.5

105
State of Charge (%)

Set value href

System response h

1.5

95
90

10

15

20
Time t(s)

25

30

35

40

0.5

100

85

Rotor speed m (pu)

href (m), h (m)

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

10

10

Time t(s)

Time t(s)

Fig. 3. The water level reaches the set value = 2 m in less than two
seconds.

of the output frequency. Frequency control requires the operation of various mechanical and electrical subsystems. We use a
PI controller that produces a certain current signal dependent
on the variable output frequency. The current signal is then
converted to an equivalent electromagnetic force by a solenoid,
as defined by:
1 ()
,
(4)
= 2
2

where is the inductance of the solenoid and is the

position of the plunger that is being moved [12]. The solenoid
is connected to a hydraulic valve actuator consisting of a
piston and a spring that is placed at the output orifice of the
upper water tank. The piston displacement is actuated by
the electromagnetic force of the solenoid through the spring,
according to:

if ,
0
(5)
= ( ) if < < ,

if ,
where is a constant, is the spring preload force,
is the spring force at maximum piston displacement, is
the piston stroke and is the actuator orientation with respect
to the globally assigned positive direction. As the piston moves
over the output orifice of the upper tank, the water flow
through the orifice changes according to:

{
2 () if ,
(6)
=

if < ,
2

where is a constant, is the flow discharge coefficient,
is the fluid density, is the pressure differential, is
the hydraulic diameter, is the fluid kinematic viscosity,
= () is the instantaneous orifice passage area, is the
Reynolds number and is the critical Reynolds number. It
can be seen that the solenoid and the hydraulic valve actuator
constitute a subsystem through which the output signal of
the PI controller effects the water flow to the turbines and
thereby the frequency of the systems output voltage. Relevant

Fig. 4. The output voltage frequency, which is proportional to the rotor speed
of the hydro generator reaches the set value after two seconds. At = 3.7
the accumulator is fully charged (top) causing the termination of the hydro
generator operation and the drop of its frequency to zero (bottom).

responses of the frequency control loop are illustrated in Fig.

4.
III. POWER CONVERSION ANALYSIS
The primary function of the power converters is to serve as
an interface between the generators and the units that either
use or store the generated energy. The HRES design requires
the use of three types of power converters (see Fig. 1).
A. Buck converter
Three identical buck converters installed at the outputs
of the solar power generators convert the generated 18.3 V
DC voltage to the accumulator voltage of 12 V. In order to
determine the buck converter parameters, we used the standard
buck converter scheme for which (7) and (8) apply [10].
=

(7)

(1 ) 2

(8)
8
The duty cycle value = 0.655 is defined by the input
voltage = 18.3 V and the output voltage = 12 V. The
capacity = 10 F and the inductance = 1.2 H have
been computed using (8) for the given period and output
voltage ripple .3
=

B. ACDC converter
The three hydro generators of the pumped-storage hydro
power plant produce AC voltage of 230 V/50 Hz. Since the
generated energy is stored in accumulators rather than being
directly transported to the feeders, an ACDC converter ought
to be implemented. As shown in Fig. 5, the desired accumulator DC voltage of 12 V is obtained through three stages
of energy conversion. The first conversion is performed by a
full-wave bridge rectifier that converts the three-phase input
voltage to a rather noised signal with oscillation amplitudes
reaching up to 6 V. In order to attenuate such high frequency

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3 Note

that the buck converters operate in continuous mode.

Fig. 5.

Powersim model of the ACDC converter

Fig. 7. Powersim model of the DCAC converter: the IGBT switching
frequency is determined by the frequency of the MAN through a frequency
synchronisation device.

Fig. 8. The resulting signal of the circuit comprising the boost converter and
inverter is the desired 230 V three-phase voltage, suitable for feeder supply.

Fig. 6. Electrical signals specifying the ACDC conversion: three-phase

input voltage (top), rectifier output signal (middle), filter output voltage and
ACDC converter output voltage (bottom)

signal components a passive low-pass filter is applied. The

low-pass filter produces a satisfactory DC voltage of 220 V
for the following parameters: = 1 , 1 = 47 F,
2 = 100 F. Finally, the use of a Buck converter is required
to decrease the value of the filter output voltage to 12 V. The
highlights of the signal conversion process are shown in Fig.
6.
C. DCAC circuit
The designed distribution grid provides power supply for
three-phase loads. Consequently, 12 V DC voltage stored in
the accumulators has to be converted to 230 V three-phase
voltage suitable for the feeder network. Said conversion has
been realised through a circuit that combines a boost converter
and an inverter. The circuit diagram is shown in Fig. 7. The
role of the boost converter is to increase the accumulator
DC voltage to a DC level that after performed DCAC
conversion will produce a three-phase voltage of 230 V. A
relatively simple inverter circuit that uses IGBTs as switches
performs the DCAC conversion. Since the inverter produces
a rectangular signal, low-pass filters were applied to extract
the first harmonic, the desired sinusoid. The cutoff frequency
of the low-pass filters was selected with respect to the inverter
output signals fundamental frequency:

= 25 Hz,
(9)
2 =

where = 0.02 s represents the period of the inverter output

signal. The use of low-pass filters in this case is reasonable
considering that the DC component of the inverter output
signal is equal to zero. The output signal of the DCAC circuit
is shown in Fig. 8.
IV. SWITCH LOGIC ARCHITECTURE
The generated energy is used to supply the 1 kW water
pump operating in the pumped-storage hydro power plant as
well as connected feeders. To optimize the systems energy
distribution we use a network of properly arranged switches
shown in Fig. 1. The control of the switch operation is
based upon several principles. Firstly, the wind power plant
represents the main power source, whereas the solar power
plant and the pumped-storage hydro power plant deliver energy
if the energy storage of the wind power plant is not sufficient
to supply the feeders. Note that the pumped-storage hydro
power plant has been accorded lowest priority because it
requires the operation of the 1 kW water pump to produce
energy. Secondly, each power plant of the HRES contains
one main accumulator and two backup accumulators, from
which power is derived if the capacity of the main accumulator
has dropped beneath 5% of its maximum value. Lastly, the
switch operation is determined by the current energy demands.
Therefore, the number of accumulators from which power
is acquired depends on the total energy consumption of the
connected feeder network.
Switches and are closed whenever the HRESs
energy production is higher than the energy consumption of the
connected feeders. In case the energy demands do not exceed

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200 W, the main accumulator of the wind power plant will

supply energy by closing the switches 2 and 3 . If the
discharge of the main accumulator of the wind power plant is
detected (meaning that its capacity has dropped beneath 5% of
its maximum value), the feeder network is being connected to
the first, and if needed, the second backup accumulator. This
will result in a change of the switches states, as follows:
Closed switches: 1 , 3 , 5 , 6 , 8 , 9 , ,
Open switches: 2 , 4 , 7 ,
The same logic applies to the switches placed within the solar
power plant and the pumped-storage hydro power plant. In
a stationary state switch is opened, whereas its closing
is triggered by energy consumption exceeding the HRESs
stored energy capacity. Should this occur, switches and
are automatically opened, while the feeder network is
being redirected to the Metropolitan Area Network through
the closed switch .

Fig. 9.

GUI main window

V. SCADA SYSTEM SPECIFICATION

Monitoring and supervision of the measured parameters and
system states requires the implementation of a communication
protocol for the microcomputer unitary network. The main
computer of the SCADA system collects the measured data
and allows for monitoring and supervision through a specifically designed GUI.
A. Communication network design
Each of the HRESs units is equipped with a controllerbased system that realises local data acquisition and control
while it is being supervised by a microcomputer. All the
microcomputers are connected to the main microcomputer
through an Ethernet TCP/IP communication network that uses
the MODBUS TCP/IP protocol for communication. For the
hardware implementation of the MODBUS TCP/IP protocol,
we use the 32-bit microcontroller-based EasyARM development system with an attached Ethernet Serial board. The
MODBUS TCP/IP software implementation of the server side
involves the following steps:
Deserialization of the received data the input buffer
content is copied to a predefined memory structure.
Message decoding
Command execution
Transmission of the response message to the client
The MODBUS TCP/IP software implementation of the client
side is realised separately. It is based on modelling the
MODBUS protocol as a finite state machine.
B. SCADA system visualisation
The systems main microcomputer receives current data
values of the system parameters from the substations through
the Ethernet TCP/IP network. A GUI application on the main
microcomputer allows for supervision by creating a visual
representation of the collected data.
The application starts with the main window that provides
access to the specific system units, as shown in Fig. 9. By
choosing the pumped-storage hydro power plant on the main

Fig. 10.

Pumped-storage hydro power plant monitoring window

menu, a new window is opened from which the current state

of the hydro power plant can be examined (see Fig. 10).
Controls on this window provide the operator with information
on the current tank level values, hydro generator currents
and voltages, accumulator capacities and parameters of the
control loops. The Controller Data button enables setting the
reference values for the tank level and frequency control loops,
as well as the loops controller parameters. It can be seen
from Fig. 11 and Fig. 12 that the windows for supervision
of the wind power plant and solar power plant are organised
in a similar manner. The current accumulator capacities of
the plants are shown directly on the window, while details on
the operating power converters and plant components such as
the wind turbine and the photovoltaic panels can be obtained
through the Energy Data control. The switch logic architecture
is graphically represented on the Feeder Network window (see
Fig. 13). It is possible to track the systems energy distribution
and the state of the switches, which varies dependent on the
networks energy demands. The presented GUI was developed
within the Microsoft Visual Studio framework and is suitable
for Windows platforms.

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Fig. 11.

Wind power plant monitoring window

Fig. 13. The energy distribution determined by the energy demands of the
feeders is displayed on the Feeder Network window.

Future work prior to the demo system construction will

include optimizing the HRES operation by taking into account
economical criteria. We also intend to explore different control strategies as well as more sophisticated power converter
solutions that have been proposed in recent literature.
R EFERENCES

Fig. 12.

Solar power plant monitoring window

VI. C ONCLUSION
The herein presented work proposes a complete design of a
HRES through three stages: control, providing efficient energy
distribution and supervision. We investigated the performance
of three different renewable energy subsystems by modelling
them and implementing adequate control algorithms. Specific
power converters responsible for accurate power supply have
been designed. Finally, we created a GUI-based framework
within which supervision and control from distant locations
can be carried out.
The developed models and SCADA system appear to be a
promising platform for research on renewable energy. Therefore, the presented concepts aimed to be implemented on a real
demo system within a graduate course on renewable energy.
By providing a basic HRES design we hope to evoke student
interest in renewable energy principles, encourage further
research and offer practical experience through working on
a versatile design project and its implementation.

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