CENTAUR is a python-based hybrid power system simulation program with a functional and lighweight GUI. It can be used for the design and simulation of hybrid solar PV-battery-diesel microgrids and is intended for both research and practical/commercial purposes. In particular, CENTAUR was originally developed as an open source platform to trial and experiment with novel control operating modes / strategies in a solar PV-battery-genset system. Note that unlike HOMER or Hybrid2, CENTAUR does not have optimisation functionality.
The program is fundamentally a chronological simulation whereby energy balances within a hybrid power system are calculated for every hour of a standard year (i.e. 8760 hours). It is functionally similar to the simulation components in packages such as HOMER and Hybrid2. Hourly solar PV outputs are generated synthetically (using the TAG model by Aguiar and Collares-Pereira) and battery energy flows are estimated using Manwell and McGowan's kinetic battery model (KiBaM).
Key benefits of CENTAUR include:
- Open source and extensible for research or commercial purposes
- Functional and lightweight GUI
- Explicitly defined system control operating modes for solar PV-battery-genset systems, describing the exact function of the genset and battery, e.g. backup, ramp control, load following, schedule operation, etc. This facilitates the simulation of user-defined control strategies.
CENTAUR has the following dependencies:
- Python 3 or later.
- SciPy Stack 0.9 or later.
- PyQT4
Refer to the CENTAUR Wiki.
Copyright (C) 2017-2018 Julius Susanto. All rights reserved.
The code is distributed under the 3-clause BSD license found in the LICENSE file.