ABSTRACT

 This thesis presents a comprehensive Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Hybrid Solar-Wind power generation with especial attention on the effect of environmental changes on the system. Unlike fossil fuels, renewable energy sources posses inherited intermittent nature that limits their stable power supply, but by combining two or more renewable sources to form a hybrid unit, the individual limitations are over come since they can complement each other. Also, the main problem ofrenewable Hybrid system is optimal sizing; over sized system is uneconomical while under sized can lead to failure of power supply or insufficient power delivery. However, in order to select an optimum combination for hybrid renewable energy system to meet the load demand, the modeling and performance evaluation of the individual components of a Hybrid Solar-Wind energy system as well as the entire system was carried out in this work using mechanistic method in which the physical laws and theories of the individual subsystems of the system under study were analyzed considering their individual mathematical models. More so, results from the simulation of a 37.8V solar module shows that changes in irradiance and temperature affect greatly the power output ofthe PV module for both ideal and non-ideal single diode models, while changes in wind speed affects the output power of the 1575W wind turbine under study. Also, the use of Boost Converter to step-up the 37.8Vdc output of the solar panel to a usable level of llOVdc proved successful at 0.66 duty cycle. In addition, the Hybrid Solar-Wind power system results show a geometrical increase in power output when compared to the individual subsystems. The hybrid performance evaluation under different varying environmental factors shows that increase in irradiance and wind velocity has a more significant impact on the hybrid system than temperature changes