Date of Award

12-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering (Holcomb Dept. of)

Committee Chair/Advisor

Dr. Rajendra Singh

Committee Member

Dr. Harlan B. Russell

Committee Member

Dr. Yongqiang Wang

Committee Member

Dr. Jiangfeng Zhang

Abstract

The primary issue that faces the humanity is climate change and because of that greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions are rising. The consequences of this issue have emphasized the necessity for replacing the dominant method of electricity generation, which mostly utilizes fossil fuels, to be centered on access to all, green, low-cost, and renewable sources of energy. Currently, photovoltaics (PV) and wind turbines are the two technologies so far that can convert the source of renewable energy, which is produced by sun irradiance and wind respectively, into large-scale electric power that can be distributed into the electricity grid. The work in this dissertation aims to provide a solution by phasing away gradually from the conventional alternating current (AC) grid, which is enormous and interconnected network and mostly uses fossil fuels to generate electricity, to a stand-alone or off-grid electrical network employes direct current (DC) grid. The independent microgrid can be established nowadays easily by constructing the solar PV farm coupled with battery storage system. Due to the technological advancements and large-scale manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries at utility-scale as well as the high efficiency of the PV panel, the integration of the solar PV plus battery-based energy system can supply electrical power to the utilization site 24 x 7 x 365. Since the solar PV panel generates DC power and the lithium-ion battery system store DC power as well as most of the loads can be operated on DC power, the end-to-end DC (EEDC) power network was implemented in this manuscript. The performance of the stand-alone EEDC power network shows no shortage of the electrical power supplied to the utilization site during the first year; and even thirty years of operation, there were no sign of electric power deficiency. The conclusive of this dissertation work presents the employment of EEDC power network as an off-grid electric system has a major advantage as compared to the existing AC grid in term of energy efficiency as well as energy surplus which results directly in financial resource preserving.

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