Novel Application of Interface Schemes for Renewable Wind/ Tidal Green Energy

Renewable energy sources have the great advantage of being able to provide power in rural areas when available. Although being cheap, clean and abundant, they have the disadvantage of the variation in output power depending on variation of energy source. Wind speed varies continuously producing a non-constant output power. The same applies to tidal energy in a reduced scale. Such variations cause significant power quality issues, for both standalone generation stations and grid connected ones. This research describes a power network consisting of a rural load, such as a small village, which is fed from a wind farm, a tidal energy plant, or a hybrid wind/tidal generation plant. The effects of wind speed/tides variations on the power quality are illustrated through simulation. The proposed control schemes have demonstrated a significant improvement to power quality, while being cheap and robust. Simulation has been used to illustrate the significant improvement through stabilization of network voltages, correction of the power factor, and increase of the power quality.