Impact of Different Load Profile Patterns on Intermittent Renewable Energy Systems for an Off Grid Power System

Abstract

The continuous desire to drift from the conventional sources of energy to renewable energy resources is stymied by the intermittent nature of some of renewable sources such as solar and wind. However, analyses on some of the required conditions in which intermittent energy resources will be attractive and when it will be less attractive are presented in this paper.Pearson’s product moment of correlation coefficient (r) technique was used to calculate to calculate the correlation coefficient with respect to how three distinct hourly load profiles relate to the available solar radiation. The three calculated r values were analysed and applied as the operating strategies for modelling the power system in RETScreen softwareThe results from the three strategies employed show that the positive r value strategy was the most viable option and it can compete with the diesel only system.Therefore, for a distributed power generation system that utilizes an intermittent energy source, the relationship between the intermittent source and the load profile should be considered as an important indicator for determining the feasibility of the project.