Abstract:
Ethiopia is a developing country, where more of its population lives in rural areas without access
to electricity supply due to the scattered nature of the settlements. And 85% of the total
population of country use traditional biomass energy as a basic source to fulfill their energy
needs. In contrast, the country is endowed with sufficient renewable energy resources which can
be used as a standalone electric energy supply system for electrifying remote areas of the
country. These resources are mainly renewable energy, such as wind and solar energy, is
desirable for power generation due to its unlimited existence and environmental friendly nature.
The aim of this thesis work is design and simulation of fuzzy logic based (controlled) hybrid
solar/wind standalone power generation system utilizing both wind and solar energy with battery
storage as a backup for supplying rural village which is called Medero found in south wollo zone
of Amara region of Ethiopia. The village is located at Latitude 10°57' N and Longitude 39°32'E.
The total population of the village is 1300 and has 280 households; one primary school, one
church, one Mosque, and one health center. Wind and solar sources are not reliable in terms of
sustainability and power quality due to their intermittent nature. A management system is thus
required for supplying the load power demand. This thesis also presents a control strategy for
power management in a standalone solar photovoltaic and wind hybrid power system based on
Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) techniques. A fuzzy logic control system has been designed and
modeled in MATLAB. Moreover results also show that the proposed FLC Power management
strategy for different cases has been found to be effective to supply the intended power demand
for Medero village. Based on the resource input, load, hybrid system size and component cost
input data considered and running the simulation in HOMER gives optimization, and grid
comparison result. The optimization result of the simulation demonstrates that the top optimal
hybrid system consists of solar PV, wind turbine, converter and battery system control strategy.
The initial investment cost of (PV, wind turbine, battery and converter) for the best optimal
hybrid system by running the software the simulation results which are lists $835,250 and the net
present cost of the system is $1,068,720. These costs give a levelized COE of $0.336 per kWh
for medero village. Based on the data obtained from universal electricity access program, the
total capital cost of grid extension was estimated as $147,692.
