Reliability and cost analysis of solar photovoltaic and fuel cell based microgrids

Maintaining a reliable operation in microgrids has significant importance. One factor required for the reliable microgrid operation is to keep certain energy reserve without sacrificing the cost for satisfying any load variation. Reliability and cost optimization of photovoltaic and fuel cell based microgrid system is investigated in this paper. A typical residential load is considered in order to introduce an optimal power sharing approach for cost effective and reliable system operation. A nonlinear frequency droop scheme is then applied to achieve the optimization objectives at the intended operating scenarios. The simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed technique.