scholarly journals The Effect of Plants on the Energy Output of Green Roof Photovoltaic Systems in Tropical Climates

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4505
Author(s):  
Chila Kaewpraek ◽  
Liaqat Ali ◽  
Md. Arfeen Rahman ◽  
Mohammad Shakeri ◽  
M. S. Chowdhury ◽  
...  

The rapid rise in the number of fossil fuel uses over the last few decades has increased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The purpose of implementing renewable energy solutions, such as solar, hydro, wind, biomass, and other renewable energy sources, is to mitigate global climate change worldwide. Solar energy has received more attention over the last few decades as an alternative source of energy, and it can play an essential role in the future of the energy industry. This is especially true of energy solutions that reduce land use, such as off-grid and on-grid solar rooftop technologies. This study aims to evaluate the energy conversion efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) systems in tropical environments. It also explores the effect of growing plants beneath PV panels. Two identical grid-connected PV systems—each containing five solar panels—were installed. The overall power production of each PV system was about 1.4 kWp. All the collected data were processed and analysed in the same way and by the same method. The PV systems were installed in two different environments—one with the possibility of growing the plants beneath the PV panels (PViGR module) and one with no possibility of growing the plants beneath the PV panels (PViSR module). The experiments were conducted in the Bo Yang District of Songkhla, Thailand over a 12-month period. Our findings indicate that green roof photovoltaic (GRPV) systems can produce around 2100 kWh of electricity in comparison to the 2000 kWh produced by other solar energy systems. Thereby, growing plants beneath PV panels increases electricity production efficiency by around 2%. This difference comes from the growing of plants underneath GRPV systems. Plants do not only help to trap humidity underneath GRPV systems but also help to cool the PV panels by absorbing the temperature beneath GRPV systems. Thus, in the production of electrical energy; the system was clearly showing significant differences in the mentioned results of both PV solar systems, which are evident for great energy efficiency performances in the future.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2070 (1) ◽  
pp. 012123
Author(s):  
Vinay Kumar ◽  
T Naveen Kumar ◽  
K T Prajwal

Abstract As an increased demand in power resources and to reduce global warming, Renewable Energy Sources (RES) are preferred over the conventional sources. Among various available RES, solar energy is the effective and efficient one. The solar energy is also clean and free energy. The use of Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) is the one of the techniques to get maximized output power from the Photo Voltaic (PV) system. The proposed method uses a voltage sensor by eliminating the need of current sensor based on selected technique using Partial Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique interfaced with DC-DC boost converter. PSO technique is one of the methods which has high conflux speed, to precisely track the maximum power. The result of the planned methodology is studied with the assistance of an acceptable simulation applied in MATLAB/Simulink setting for experiment to valid of microcontroller which is employed. The result obtained from the simulations studies showed that current sensor less methodology using PSO technique can extract the maximize power from PV systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 9318
Author(s):  
Mladen Bošnjaković ◽  
Ante Čikić ◽  
Boris Zlatunić

A large drop in prices of photovoltaic (PV) equipment, an increase in electricity prices, and increasing environmental pressure to use renewable energy sources that pollute the environment significantly less than the use of fossil fuels have led to a large increase in installed roof PV capacity in many parts of the world. In this context, this paper aims to analyze the cost-effectiveness of installing PV systems in the rural continental part of Croatia on existing family houses. A typical example is a house in Dragotin, Croatia with an annual consumption of 4211.70 kWh of electricity on which PV panels are placed facing south under the optimal slope. The calculation of the optimal size of a PV power plant with a capacity of 3.6 kW, without battery energy storage, was performed by the Homer program. The daily load curve was obtained by measuring the electricity consumption at the facility every hour during a characteristic day in the month of June. As most of the activities are related to electricity consumption, repeating during most days of the year, and taking into account seasonal activities, daily load curves were made for a characteristic day in each month of the year. Taking into account the insolation for the specified location, using the Internet platform Solargis Prospect, hourly data on the electricity production of selected PV modules for a characteristic day in each month were obtained. Based on the previous data, the electricity injected into the grid and taken from the grid was calculated. Taking into account the current tariffs for the sale and purchase of electricity, investment prices, and maintenance of equipment, the analysis shows that such a PV system can pay off in 10.5 years without government incentives.


Buildings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 192
Author(s):  
Zainab Usman ◽  
Joseph Tah ◽  
Henry Abanda ◽  
Charles Nche

Climate change and global warming have triggered a global increase in the use of renewable energy for various purposes. In recent years, the photovoltaic (PV)-system has become one of the most popular renewable energy technologies that captures solar energy for different applications. Despite its popularity, its adoption is still facing enormous challenges, especially in developing countries. Experience from research and practice has revealed that installed PV-systems significantly underperform. This has been one of the major barriers to PV-system adoption, yet it has received very little attention. The poor performance of installed PV-systems means they do not generate the required electric energy output they have been designed to produce. Performance assessment parameters such as performance yields and performance ratio (PR) help to provide mathematical accounts of the expected energy output of PV-systems. Many reasons have been advanced for the disparity in the performance of PV-systems. This study aims to analyze the factors that affect the performance of installed PV-systems, such as geographical location, solar irradiance, dust, and shading. Other factors such as multiplicity of PV-system components in the market and the complexity of the permutations of these components, their types, efficiencies, and their different performance indicators are poorly understood, thus making it difficult to optimize the efficiency of the system as a whole. Furthermore, mathematical computations are presented to prove that the different design methods often used for the design of PV-systems lead to results with significant differences due to different assumptions often made early on. The methods for the design of PV-systems are critically appraised. There is a paucity of literature about the different methods of designing PV-systems, their disparities, and the outcomes of each method. The rationale behind this review is to analyze the variations in designs and offer far-reaching recommendations for future studies so that researchers can come up with more standardized design approaches.


Author(s):  
Jakub Edward Zaleski

Abstract This article is focused on analysing the present state of renewable electricity production and consumption coverage in Germany, concentrating on the intermittence of wind and solar energy production and considering the significance of the wind silence phenomenon. The development and promotion of renewable energy is a major goal set out by politicians of which one example is the German plan “Energiewende”. The author examines wind and solar energy complementarity and attempts assessing the possibility of basing Germanys’ electricity production on renewable energy sources, without significant advancements in technology and changes in consumer behaviour. Using the analysis based on hourly data of consumption and production by source of electricity in Germany in 2016, the research addresses the issues of renewable energy source effectiveness, intermittence and points to the critical matter of periodical unavailability of wind and solar energy.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1254
Author(s):  
Abdullah Alshahrani ◽  
Siddig Omer ◽  
Yuehong Su

It is widely believed that the incorporation of renewable energy to the current power grid is the way forward in achieving sustainable power generation. Currently, with the reduction of PV prices, many countries have started connecting PV systems into their grid network, hence leading to a sharp increase of the penetration levels of renewable electricity production. This will bring significant change in the load pattern and the ramping requirements of the grid’s conventional generation system due to the varying nature of the renewable energy generation. This significant change affects the stability of the grid frequency because it becomes more challenging for the system operators to maintain the equilibrium between the generation and load. Additionally, this significant change affects the PV system potential hosting capacity of the traditional grid because of the PV system’s curtailment in order to comply with the constraints of the grid’s conventional generation system. In this paper, the net load, grid frequency stability, and grid potential hosting capacity are evaluated in the situation of increasing the penetration level of large-scale PV systems generation into the grid. The results show that the grid operators will face increasingly variable net load patterns and steeper ramping events as the PV system penetration level increases. Additionally, the results show the requirement of having flexibility measures that target each grid constraint as the PV system penetration level increases.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 6956-6964
Author(s):  
H. Camur ◽  
Y. Kassem ◽  
E. Alessi

Lebanon suffers from daily electricity shortages. The country has paid much attention to renewable energy sources, particularly solar, to gradually replace conventional energy. Installing a photovoltaic (PV) system becomes increasingly attractive for residential consumers due to the rising electricity tariff rates while it reduces the dependency on domestic power generators. No known study has dealt with the investigation of potential grid-connected rooftop PV systems with various sun-tracking modes and PV technologies in Nahr El-Bared, Lebanon. Consequently, the main objective of the current paper is to investigate the feasibility of a 5kW grid-connected PV system of various technologies (mono-crystalline silicon and poly-crystalline silicon) and sun-tracking modes including fixed tilt and 2-axis systems for rooftop households in Lebanon. The Nahr El-Bared camp was the case study was of the paper. RETScreen Expert software was used to evaluate the techno-economic performance of the proposed systems. The results show that the annual electrical energy from a fixed 5kW PV panel tilted at an optimal angle ranged from 8564.47kWh to 8776.81kWh, while the annual electrical energy from the PV tracking system was within the range of 11511.67-12100.92kWh. This amount of energy output would contribute significantly to reduce the energy shortage in the country. A typical household was selected to establish a load profile and load supply during both grid availability and outage periods. The highest energy consumption that can be covered by the PV systems was recorded during the spring and summer seasons. Also, the average energy production cost ranged from 0.0239 to 0.0243$/kWh for all the proposed systems. It was concluded that a 5kW grid-connected rooftop PV system could be economically justifiable. Finally, this study tried to increase the awareness about utilizing PV sun-tracking systems and the feasibility of small-scale grid-connected rooftop PV systems in the selected regions. The results of this research can help investors in the energy and building sectors.


Author(s):  
Jorge Morales Pedraza

Cuba, a small island in the Caribbean Sea with a total land area of 109.884 km2 and a population of around 11.423 million, has no significant proved oil, gas and coal reserves. Also use, in a very limited manner, some of the four main renewable energy sources available in the country for electricity production, generating just 50,1 GW/h or 4,04% of the total electricity consumed in 2015 (20.288 GW/h). In 2016, electricity consumption fell to 15.182 GW/h; this means a reduction of 25% in comparison to 2015. In 2016, the participation of renewable energy sources in the energy mix of the country reached 4,65%. The different renewable energy sources available in the country are hydropower, wind power, solar photovoltaic, and bioenergy. In 2015, out of Cuba’s total 566 MW of renewable energy capacity installed, 83% of the total was in the bioenergy sector. In 2016, the renewable energy capacity installed in the country reached 642 MW. According to the decision adopted by the Cuban government, the participation of renewable energy sources in the energy mix of the country should reach 24% in 2030, an increase of almost 20% compared to the level reported in 2016. Among the different renewable energy sources available in the country, solar energy is one of the main contributors to the national energy system, and also one of the leading supplier of energy to independent users all over the country.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (Suppl. 5) ◽  
pp. 1449-1458
Author(s):  
Vladimir Mijakovski ◽  
Monika Lutovska ◽  
Zoran Trajkovski

Wind energy as a renewable energy source with the highest growth rate in the last two decades, is considered as a very important source of electricity for the future. The forecasts for development of wind energy are highly optimistic and state that this type of energy will be really important in the future. Following recent data and analysis from certain studies, the share of wind energy in the global world electricity generation in 2020 is estimated to reach 12%. In the same context, and in order to reduce high dependence on fossil fuels, Macedonian government took some steps to introduce and enforce utilization of renewable energy sources. First wind park with capacity of 36.8 MW, installed and operated by the state-owned electricity producing company (JSC Macedonian Power Plants - ELEM), started with operation in April 2014, on a location near Bogdanci. The techno-economic analysis regarding its performance in terms of investment costs, operation and maintenance costs, electricity production and return on investment period, considering valid feed-in tariffs for wind energy production in the country is also presented in the article.


Author(s):  
E Sarath Chandra Reddy ◽  
◽  
Ch Chengaiah ◽  

India is country with abundant solar energy availability. The annual solar energy output exceeds the total energy output of India's non renewable energy sources. As increasing installation of renewable energy sources into the grid. The fluctuations of power based on operating climate conditions like solar insulation and temperature is highly depends as it is not possible to limit such installations with time the penetration level of renewable sources will increase to meet demand with green energy. This paper proposed a flexibly power point tracking (FPPT) control of active power in photovoltaic system to achieve reserve capacity with Power Limiting Control (PLC) which will provide high stability to existing system without overloading it thus a proper integration to the grid and to mitigate adverse negative effects of high level integrations are possible with modified grid codes in stand of replacement of existing grid . Matlab/Simulink software package is used to make the model and effectiveness of the propose system is tested with Simulink environment..


2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 96
Author(s):  
H. I. Issa ◽  
H. J. Mohammed ◽  
L. M. Abdali ◽  
A. G. Al Bairmani ◽  
M. Ghachim

In this research, the study theory of system includes the use of an important source of renewable energy sources (solar source) and linking this system with an electrical load. The world is witnessing a significant rise in fossil fuel prices since the ending of the 20th century and now, this rise in price increases with the decrease in inventory day after day. Therefore, it turned that the field of attention to researchers of power generation to expand in non-conventional energy sources (new and renewable energy sources).New and renewable energy is inexhaustible in use because they rely on renewable natural resources. The mathematical model is an important part of the detailed study for PV systems. As well as study models for photovoltaic systems via the MATLAB/Simulink, this programming environment contains many models for renewable systems intended to perform simulation and analysis.Solar cells system needs to apply the MPPT algorithm due to the instability of external circumstances such as solar radiation and temperature.At a constant temperature of 25 °C, as the radiation level increases, the current and voltage of the module increase, this leads to an increase in output power. At a constant radiation level of 100 W/m2, as the module temperature increases, the current increases and the voltage decreases, this causes the output power to decrease. The maximum power is reached at 17 V and 3.5 A by the MPPT method. The Perturb and Observe algorithm is used to achieve maximum power.


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