MSc Thesis: Design and Simulation of a DC Microgrid for a Small Island in Belize
Jordan Grant successfully defends his master's thesis
REYKJAVIK, JULY 6 - On the 28th of May, Jordan Grant, MSc in Sustainable Energy Engineering, successfully defended his master's thesis research in which he used MATLAB/Simulink and HOMER to design, simulate and assess individual components of a proposed DC microgrid run on solar and wind for a small island in Belize. Jordan's work was supervised by Ragnar Kristjánsson from Háskólinn í Reykjavík and advised by César A. Camacho from UNAM.
Jordan described how he coded the perturb and observe (P&O) algorithm into MATLAB to deduce the maximum power point tracker (MPPT). MPPT is used to extract the maximum power from the given sunlight. Using predicted load files of the island, he modeled the solar and wind resources. He then analyzed the economics of the different proposed systems using the HOMER software.
Ultimately, Jordan deduced a DC microgrid required 20% less power generation to meet the islands load needs as compared to an AC microgrid by eliminating conversion losses that occur when switching between AC-DC, decreasing corona discharges due to a lack of the skin effect. On top of being more technically efficient, the costs would also be reduced and would be lower than an all diesel AC system and an AC hybrid microgrid.
The methodology of Jordan's study would be applicable to other small islands looking to optimize their power production by eliminating the need for AC power conversion within their power system. To read more about Jordan's work, click on the following link.
Congratulations, Jordan on an excellent thesis!