8. Summary of chapter

In order for the renewable energy sources to replace conventional fossil fuel-based energy sources, there is need for them to provide steady power supply for any load demand. Due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources, energy storage system is needed for steady power supply. Among all renewable energy sources, solar energy has the highest energy potential. But it is only available during diurnal period, with unsteady intensity. In order for such a system to compete with conventional fossil fuel-based system, there is a need for it to operate in standalone mode with sustainable and long-term energy storage system. For such standalone operations, it is very important to capture solar energy with high efficiency.

Photovoltaic system provides a most simple mean to convert sunlight into electricity and concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) technology provides the highest solar energy conversion efficiency among all photovoltaic systems. However, the entire photovoltaic market is dominated with conventional flat plate PV panels. In addition, the literature also focuses on the performance model and optimization strategy of conventional PV system, for its standalone operation. There is not even a single commercial software available which can handle CPV for the system performance analysis. Therefore, a detailed performance model and optimization strategy is proposed for standalone operation of CPV. For energy storage purpose, hydrogen is considered to provide a sustainable and long-term energy storage option than the conventional battery-based electrochemical storage.

A detailed energy management technique, performance model and optimization strategy is proposed for standalone operation of CPV-Hydrogen system. The proposed model and strategy is successfully developed and implemented using micro-GA in FORTRAN programming. The overall system size is optimized for uninterrupted power supply to the consumer load with minimum cost. The proposed dynamic strategy is not based upon hourly performance of the system but it also restores the system to its initial state and prepares it for varying weather conditions. The system is not only designed to handle hourly weather variations but it also efficiently performs during seasonal weather variations. Such tech-economic optimization and analysis can be performed for any load demand and at any condition. Moreover, the proposed methodology can be integrated into commercial simulation tools so that they can become capable of handling CPV in their analysis.
