Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Renewable energy is a growing source of electricity in the world due to the increasing awareness of the environmental problems, the increase in the fuel cost and the high power demand. Canada is a large country and has various areas rich in wind and solar resources, which should make it to the top of countries capitalizing on these renewable sources for electricity production. In this proposal, power management and control schemes will be developed to operate microgrids based on renewable (wind and solar) generators and hybrid storage energy systems (battery, supercapacitor and fuel cell) with capability to operate in grid-tied and off-grid modes. Multilevel converter configurations for integrating renewable generators will be investigated to increase the penetration of these sources in the power generation systems and support the grid in case of failure. Energy storage systems will improve the capacity to extract maximum power from wind and solar sources and improve their efficiency by storing the excess power and using it at low wind speed and sun irradiance, which will increase the contribution of renewable energy in electricity production and reduce the fuel consumption in remote communities. The benefits of increased deployment of renewable wind-solar power with storage include grid wide energy savings and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air contaminants. Such systems will improve the quality of life in remote communities and locations required to operate under power outage due to grid failure. Power management and control systems for efficient operation will include weather forecasting, power prediction and load profile to efficiently operate the renewable microgrid. Artificial intelligence will be used to develop smart power management and control systems, which will contribute to providing leading edge technology for the future generation of hybrid renewable energy systems. This research will be committed to finding innovative, cost effective solutions in renewable energy and storage systems. Control design and implementation for microgrids and grid-tied renewable power systems will be investigated through real time simulation and prototyping. Modeling and control will be investigated in order to understand the behavior of all components and match the system with reliable control strategies. Simulation and experimentation will be conducted using the research equipment available at Saint Mary's University to verify the performance of the proposed control and power management strategies. Then, industrial scale experimental validation of the research findings will be carried out in collaboration with industrial partners on real hybrid renewable generators based microgrids. The proposed research will bring contributions to scientific knowledge, solutions for industry and success for HQP training in the field renewable energy.