The purpose of the Hymod software is to carry out the optimal sizing of the generation units (conventional and/or renewable) and storage systems required in an electrical system isolated from the main grid, in order to meet a required electrical demand. This sizing is done with an optimization algorithm looking for the design that meets the minimum cost and the minimum emission of CO2, according to a factor of importance assigned to the emissions.
Features
Hymod is an open source software that allows designers of electric microgrids to select the sources of generation and storage to be used among the following available elements: photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, diesel generators, battery banks, storage by pumping water and inclusion of electric vehicles as additional storage systems for the network or as dynamic loads; and perform the following calculations optimally:
- The number of renewable generation units required by the system.
- The number of batteries required for the storage system.
- The storage capacity required by the hydro-pumped system.
- The management plan for charging electric vehicles present in the system.
A selection box is observed in each element of the Figure, these boxes must be selected by the designer if he requires to include an element in the microgrid.
Additionally, the designer must provide the following data in the start window:
- Electrical demand time series hour by hour in the place where the microgrid will be implemented, which can be generated with a typical residential curve and the user must provide the number of homes; or this claim can be uploaded as an xls file.
- Start time and end time of calculation. These times indicate the initial data of demand and the final data that will be taken into account to carry out the design.
- Currency in which you want to perform the calculations (You can choose between Euros, Dollars or Colombian Pesos).
- The interest rate for project financing, useful lifetime, cost of emissions, minimum hourly electric demand that must be supplied by the system, total percentage of the demand that must be covered in the total design time and price of the land.
- If the user selects the option to use wind turbines, he must supply the hourly data of the wind speed, such as xls file, in the place where the microgrid will be implemented. In addition, user must enter the technical parameters of the turbine, the costs of it and the area occupied.
- If the user selects the option to use photovoltaic panels, he must supply the hourly data of the solar radiation and the ambient temperature, such as xls files, in the place where the microgrid will be implemented. The user must also enter the technical parameters of the panel, the costs of the same and the area occupied.
- If the user selects the Diesel generator option, he must supply the monthly data of the Diesel price, in the place where the microgrid will be implemented. User must also enter the number of generators, their technical parameters, the cost of lubricants and maintenance and the CO2 emissions generated by the burning of diesel fuel.
- If the user selects the option to use batteries, he must enter the technical parameters of the batteries, the costs and the area occupied.
- If the user selects the option to use storage by pumping water, he must enter the technical parameters of this system and the associated costs.
- If the user selects the option to use electric vehicles, he must enter the technical parameters of these, the number of vehicles, their cost and their hours of operation, if he wants the system to only consider them as additional charges (he must fill in only the boxes of type 1 vehicles). In addition, the user can choose the system to consider electric vehicles as additional storage systems (type 2 vehicles), in which case the user must provide the approximate daily distance that these vehicles will travel as xls data file.
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System requirements
To operate, Hymod requires the previous installation of Matlab R2015b software or later versions, the CVX add-on for convex optimization in Matlab and the Gurobi solver.