A New Methodology for Smoothing Power Peaks Produced by Electricity Demand and a Hydrokinetic Turbine for a Household Load on Grid Using Supercapacitors

Abstract

The power fluctuations produced by electric vehicles represent a drawback in large-scale residential applications. In addition to that, short power peaks could pose a risk to the stability of the electrical grid. For this reason, this study presents a feasibility analysis for a residential system composed of electric vehicle chargers. The objective is focused on smoothing the power fluctuations produced by the charge by a supercapacitor through adequate energy control; in addition, self-consumption is analyzed. Data sampling intervals are also analyzed; the modeling was performed in Matlab software. The results show that there are errors of up to 9% if the data are measured at different sampling intervals. On the other hand, if the supercapacitor is considered, the system saves 59.87% of the energy purchased from the utility grid per day, and the self-consumption of electricity by prosumers can increase up to 73%. Finally, the hydrokinetic/supercapacitor/grid system would save up to 489.1 USD/year in the cost of purchasing electricity from the grid and would increase by 492.75 USD/year for the sale electricity.