Sizing, Modeling and Energy Flow Management of PV-Diesel-Batteries Microgrid for Agricultural Application

AbstractThrough the years, agriculture has continued to evolve. Today, agricultural machinery provides a guarantee of efficiency and performance but it leads to an increase in electrical energy demand which creates new challenges especially in rural areas where the acces to medium voltage networks is not always possible, that’s why multi-source electrical systems are the best suited. The aim of the present work is to size a microgrid composed of photovoltaic array, diesel generator and energy storage batteries in order to meet the electrical energy needs of an agricultural farm and also to manage the sized microgrid energy flow. The mathematical models of microgrid components were built on Matlab Simulink before using Load Following strategy. According to this study, we note that a good electrical energy needs estimation is the first step to succeed in microgrid sizing and the power produced by photovoltaic generator varies from site to site, depending on the geographical location and mainly on two factors that are: solar irradiance, temperature. One-diode solar cell model was validated on Matlab Simulink for a chosen solar panel from PVsyst library under standard test conditions before building the PV array and introducing real measurements of solar irradiance and temperature as parameters. Simulations results showed that the proposed energy flow management Load Following strategy is functional based on the power generated by different sources in order to power the entire load during the day under various meteorological conditions.KeywordsMicrogridEnergySizingModelingManagement