scholarly journals Energy planning with renewable energy sources

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
Félix Antonio Solórzano Narváez ◽  
Edgar Iván Moreno Castro

The urban energy model is based on imports from external sources. The continuous increase in energy demand due to population growth and development implies increasing resource requirements. The alternative is to use renewable energies that take advantage of urban resources. The diversity of typologies of cities in terms of resources, demands, architectural conditions, infrastructure, or density, makes a specific analysis necessary. This work identifies fourteen factors concerning the planning process that would allow choosing the most appropriate technology for a given city. Through consultation of experts, the existence of the resource is defined as the most prevalent factor, followed by economic conditions; On the other hand, it is detected that environmental aspects such as global warming, eutrophication, or acidification, are the least incidents when selecting technologies.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Torabi Moghadam ◽  
Silvia Coccolo ◽  
Guglielmina Mutani ◽  
Patrizia Lombardi ◽  
Jean Louis Scartezzini ◽  
...  

The spatial visualization is a very useful tool to help decision-makers in the urban planning process to create future energy transition strategies, implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in the context of sustainable cities. Statistical methods are often used to understand the driving parameters of energy consumption but rarely used to evaluate future urban renovation scenarios. Simulating whole cities using energy demand softwares can be very extensive in terms of computer resources and data collection. A new methodology, using city archetypes is proposed, here, to simulate the energy consumption of urban areas including urban energy planning scenarios. The objective of this paper is to present an innovative solution for the computation and visualization of energy saving at the city scale.The energy demand of cities, as well as the micro-climatic conditions, are calculated by using a simplified 3D model designed as function of the city urban geometrical and physical characteristics. Data are extracted from a GIS database that was used in a previous study. In this paper, we showed how the number of buildings to be simulated can be drastically reduced without affecting the accuracy of the results. This model is then used to evaluate the influence of two set of renovation solutions. The energy consumption are then integrated back in the GIS to identify the areas in the city where refurbishment works are needed more rapidly. The city of Settimo Torinese (Italy) is used as a demonstrator for the proposed methodology, which can be applied to all cities worldwide with limited amount of information.


Author(s):  
Gema Hernandez-Moral ◽  
◽  
Víctor Iván Serna-Gonzalez ◽  
Francisco Javier Miguel Herrero ◽  
César Valmaseda-Tranque

Climate change will have a strong impact on urban settings, which will also represent one of the major challenges (world’s urban population is expected to double by 2050, EU buildings consume 40% final energy and generate 36% CO2 emissions). A plethora of initiatives address this challenge by stressing the underlying necessity of thinking globally but acting locally. This entails the inclusion of a varied set of decision-makers acting at different scales and needing robust, comprehensive and comparable information that can support them in their energy planning process. To this end, this paper presents the GIS4ENER tool to support energy planners at different scales by proposing a bottom-up approach towards the calculation of energy demand and consumption at local scale that can be aggregated to support other decision-making scales. It is based on three main pillars: the exploitation of publicly available data (such as Open Street Maps, Building Stock Observatory or TABULA), the implementation of standardised methods to calculate energy (in particular the ISO52000 family) and the use of Geographic Information Systems to represent and facilitate the understanding of results, and their aggregation. The paper presents the context, main differences with other approaches and results of the tool in Osimo (IT).


Author(s):  
Molla Asmare ◽  
Mustafa Ilbas

Nowadays, the most decisive challenges we are fronting are perfectly clean energy making for equitable and sustainable modern energy access, and battling the emerging alteration of the climate. This is because, carbon-rich fuels are the fundamental supply of utilized energy for strengthening human society, and it will be sustained in the near future. In connection with this, electrochemical technologies are an emerging and domineering tool for efficiently transforming the existing scarce fossil fuels and renewable energy sources into electric power with a trivial environmental impact. Compared with conventional power generation technologies, SOFC that operate at high temperature is emerging as a frontrunner to convert the fuels chemical energy into electric power and permits the deployment of varieties of fuels with negligible ecological destructions. According to this critical review, direct ammonia is obtained as a primary possible choice and price-effective green fuel for T-SOFCs. This is because T-SOFCs have higher volumetric power density, mechanically stable, and high thermal shocking resistance. Also, there is no sealing issue problem which is the chronic issues of the planar one. As a result, the toxicity of ammonia to use as a fuel is minimized if there may be a leakage during operation. It is portable and manageable that can be work everywhere when there is energy demand. Besides, manufacturing, onboard hydrogen deposition, and transportation infrastructure connected snags of hydrogen will be solved using ammonia. Ammonia is a low-priced carbon-neutral source of energy and has more stored volumetric energy compared with hydrogen. Yet, to utilize direct NH3 as a means of hydrogen carrier and an alternative green fuel in T-SOFCs practically determining the optimum operating temperatures, reactant flow rates, electrode porosities, pressure, the position of the anode, thickness and diameters of the tube are still requiring further improvement. Therefore, mathematical modeling ought to be developed to determine these parameters before planning for experimental work. Also, a performance comparison of AS, ES, and CS- T-SOFC powered with direct NH3 will be investigated and best-performed support will be carefully chosen for practical implementation and an experimental study will be conducted for verification based on optimum parameter values obtained from numerical modeling.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4061 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoto Takatsu ◽  
Hooman Farzaneh

After the Great East Japan Earthquake, energy security and vulnerability have become critical issues facing the Japanese energy system. The integration of renewable energy sources to meet specific regional energy demand is a promising scenario to overcome these challenges. To this aim, this paper proposes a novel hydrogen-based hybrid renewable energy system (HRES), in which hydrogen fuel can be produced using both the methods of solar electrolysis and supercritical water gasification (SCWG) of biomass feedstock. The produced hydrogen is considered to function as an energy storage medium by storing renewable energy until the fuel cell converts it to electricity. The proposed HRES is used to meet the electricity demand load requirements for a typical household in a selected residential area located in Shinchi-machi in Fukuoka prefecture, Japan. The techno-economic assessment of deploying the proposed systems was conducted, using an integrated simulation-optimization modeling framework, considering two scenarios: (1) minimization of the total cost of the system in an off-grid mode and (2) maximization of the total profit obtained from using renewable electricity and selling surplus solar electricity to the grid, considering the feed-in-tariff (FiT) scheme in a grid-tied mode. As indicated by the model results, the proposed HRES can generate about 47.3 MWh of electricity in all scenarios, which is needed to meet the external load requirement in the selected study area. The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of the system in scenarios 1 and 2 was estimated at 55.92 JPY/kWh and 56.47 JPY/kWh, respectively.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 1988
Author(s):  
Ioannis E. Kosmadakis ◽  
Costas Elmasides

Electricity supply in nonelectrified areas can be covered by distributed renewable energy systems. The main disadvantage of these systems is the intermittent and often unpredictable nature of renewable energy sources. Moreover, the temporal distribution of renewable energy may not match that of energy demand. Systems that combine photovoltaic modules with electrical energy storage (EES) can eliminate the above disadvantages. However, the adoption of such solutions is often financially prohibitive. Therefore, all parameters that lead to a functionally reliable and self-sufficient power generation system should be carefully considered during the design phase of such systems. This study proposes a sizing method for off-grid electrification systems consisting of photovoltaics (PV), batteries, and a diesel generator set. The method is based on the optimal number of PV panels and battery energy capacity whilst minimizing the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for a period of 25 years. Validations against a synthesized load profile produced grid-independent systems backed by different accumulator technologies, with LCOEs ranging from 0.34 EUR/kWh to 0.46 EUR/kWh. The applied algorithm emphasizes a parameter of useful energy as a key output parameter for which the solar harvest is maximized in parallel with the minimization of the LCOE.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 217
Author(s):  
Amela Ajanovic ◽  
Marina Siebenhofer ◽  
Reinhard Haas

Environmental problems such as air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are especially challenging in urban areas. Electric mobility in different forms may be a solution. While in recent years a major focus was put on private electric vehicles, e-mobility in public transport is already a very well-established and mature technology with a long history. The core objective of this paper is to analyze the economics of e-mobility in the Austrian capital of Vienna and the corresponding impact on the environment. In this paper, the historical developments, policy framework and scenarios for the future development of mobility in Vienna up to 2030 are presented. A major result shows that in an ambitious scenario for the deployment of battery electric vehicles, the total energy demand in road transport can be reduced by about 60% in 2030 compared to 2018. The major conclusion is that the policies, especially subsidies and emission-free zones will have the largest impact on the future development of private and public e-mobility in Vienna. Regarding the environmental performance, the most important is to ensure that a very high share of electricity used for electric mobility is generated from renewable energy sources.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 357
Author(s):  
Pedro Moura ◽  
José Ignacio Moreno ◽  
Gregorio López López ◽  
Manuel Alvarez-Campana

University campuses are normally constituted of large buildings responsible for high energy demand, and are also important as demonstration sites for new technologies and systems. This paper presents the results of achieving energy sustainability in a testbed composed of a set of four buildings that constitute the Telecommunications Engineering School of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. In the paper, after characterizing the consumption of university buildings for a complete year, different options to achieve more sustainable use of energy are presented, considering the integration of renewable generation sources, namely photovoltaic generation, and monitoring and controlling electricity demand. To ensure the implementation of the desired monitoring and control, an internet of things (IoT) platform based on wireless sensor network (WSN) infrastructure was designed and installed. Such a platform supports a smart system to control the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and lighting systems in buildings. Furthermore, the paper presents the developed IoT-based platform, as well as the implemented services. As a result, the paper illustrates how providing old existing buildings with the appropriate technology can contribute to the objective of transforming such buildings into nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) at a low cost.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 2045
Author(s):  
Pierpaolo Garavaso ◽  
Fabio Bignucolo ◽  
Jacopo Vivian ◽  
Giulia Alessio ◽  
Michele De Carli

Energy communities (ECs) are becoming increasingly common entities in power distribution networks. To promote local consumption of renewable energy sources, governments are supporting members of ECs with strong incentives on shared electricity. This policy encourages investments in the residential sector for building retrofit interventions and technical equipment renovations. In this paper, a general EC is modeled as an energy hub, which is deemed as a multi-energy system where different energy carriers are converted or stored to meet the building energy needs. Following the standardized matrix modeling approach, this paper introduces a novel methodology that aims at jointly identifying both optimal investments (planning) and optimal management strategies (operation) to supply the EC’s energy demand in the most convenient way under the current economic framework and policies. Optimal planning and operating results of five refurbishment cases for a real multi-family building are found and discussed, both in terms of overall cost and environmental impact. Simulation results verify that investing in building thermal efficiency leads to progressive electrification of end uses. It is demonstrated that the combination of improvements on building envelope thermal performances, photovoltaic (PV) generation, and heat pump results to be the most convenient refurbishment investment, allowing a 28% overall cost reduction compared to the benchmark scenario. Furthermore, incentives on shared electricity prove to stimulate higher renewable energy source (RES) penetration, reaching a significant reduction of emissions due to decreased net energy import.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 500
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Pilo ◽  
Giuditta Pisano ◽  
Simona Ruggeri ◽  
Matteo Troncia

The energy transition for decarbonization requires consumers’ and producers’ active participation to give the power system the necessary flexibility to manage intermittency and non-programmability of renewable energy sources. The accurate knowledge of the energy demand of every single customer is crucial for accurately assessing their potential as flexibility providers. This topic gained terrific input from the widespread deployment of smart meters and the continuous development of data analytics and artificial intelligence. The paper proposes a new technique based on advanced data analytics to analyze the data registered by smart meters to associate to each customer a typical load profile (LP). Different LPs are assigned to low voltage (LV) customers belonging to nominal homogeneous category for overcoming the inaccuracy due to non-existent coincident peaks, arising by the common use of a unique LP per category. The proposed methodology, starting from two large databases, constituted by tens of thousands of customers of different categories, clusters their consumption profiles to define new representative LPs, without a priori preferring a specific clustering technique but using that one that provides better results. The paper also proposes a method for associating the proper LP to new or not monitored customers, considering only few features easily available for the distribution systems operator (DSO).


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1514
Author(s):  
Rebecca Peters ◽  
Jürgen Berlekamp ◽  
Ana Lucía ◽  
Vittoria Stefani ◽  
Klement Tockner ◽  
...  

Mitigating climate change, while human population and economy are growing globally, requires a bold shift to renewable energy sources. Among renewables, hydropower is currently the most economic and efficient technique. However, due to a lack of impact assessments at the catchment scale in the planning process, the construction of hydropower plants (HPP) may have unexpected ecological, socioeconomic, and political ramifications in the short and in the long term. The Vjosa River, draining parts of Northern Greece and Albania, is one of the few predominantly free-flowing rivers left in Europe; at the same time its catchment is identified an important resource for future hydropower development. While current hydropower plants are located along tributaries, planned HPP would highly impact the free-flowing main stem. Taking the Vjosa catchment as a case study, the aim of this study was to develop a transferable impact assessment that ranks potential hydropower sites according to their projected impacts on a catchment scale. Therefore, we integrated established ecological, social, and economic indicators for all HPP planned in the river catchment, while considering their capacity, and developed a ranking method based on impact categories. For the Vjosa catchment, ten hydropower sites were ranked as very harmful to the environment as well as to society. A sensitivity analysis revealed that this ranking is dependent upon the selection of indicators. Small HPP showed higher cumulative impacts than large HPP, when normalized to capacity. This study empowers decision-makers to compare both the ranked impacts and the generated energy of planned dam projects at the catchment scale.


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