Control, energy management and performance evaluation of desalination unit based renewable energies using a graphical user interface

Renewable energy sources coupled to desalination unit offers a promising prospect for covering the fundamental needs of power and water in isolated regions. In this context, this study aims to control a reverse osmosis desalination unit powered by renewable energy sources and hydrogen storage situated in the Kerkennah islands (Tunisia). The hybrid system is made up of two wind turbines, a photovoltaic generator, a fuel cell and an electrolyzer. In order to ensure an optimum exploitation of the produced energy, a novel power management algorithm is developed to control the different energy flows exchanged among the system components. This algorithm determines the reference powers of the fuel cell, the electrolyzer and the desalination unit in seven operation modes, and supervises the fill levels of fresh water and hydrogen tanks. The daily simulation of the desalination system with the proposed algorithm for any month of the year and the annual simulation of the energy supervision algorithm are carried out by new graphical interfaces. These interfaces facilitate the simulation and display the different curves describing the hybrid system behavior. The simulation results show that the proposed control strategies provide good installation autonomy and improve the system stability under varying load power demand.