Technical and economic analysis of solar energy application for a hospital building in Dammam, Saudi Arabia: a thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering (ME), 2018 / Abdulrahim Hamed S Alghamdi ; supervisor: Ramon Zamora.
An increase in energy demand is a consequence of the world's population growth. Hence, more energy supply is needed to meet the demand. Fossil based energy can run out as well as cause air pollution. Consequently, this thesis investigates the feasibility of involving PVs in a grid with diesel b...
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| Format: | Ethesis |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | Click here to access this resource online |
| Summary: | An increase in energy demand is a consequence of the world's population growth. Hence, more energy supply is needed to meet the demand. Fossil based energy can run out as well as cause air pollution. Consequently, this thesis investigates the feasibility of involving PVs in a grid with diesel backup generator to reduce reliance on conventional energy as well as decreasing air pollutants (CO2, SO2 and NOx) for a hospital building in Dammam. It also optimises the grid-connected PV system in terms of levelized cost of energy (LCOE), net present cost (NPC) and operating costs while verifying the effect of the grid power interruptions on the system costs. Moreover, energy sellback rates from the excess energy coming from PVs to the grid is included. HOMER Pro and MATLAB software were used to optimise both systems as HOMER Pro provided the ability to design, simulate and optimise power generation systems, and the ability to choose different type of control for any modelled systems. MATLAB was used to design a customised control strategy and linked to HOMER through MATLAB Link (ML) strategy for optimising both systems and compared it with built-in dispatch in HOMER Pro called Cycle Charging (CC). Using the project lifetime of 25 year in HOMER, the results reveal that ML strategy provides the optimum solution for the grid-connected PV system when the grid power outage occurs twice a year and with 5% sellback rate higher than the grid energy price as the LCOE is 0.05701 $/kWh, total NPC is $8,288,628.00 and annual operating costs are 156,658.00 $/year. The proposed system also results in huge reduction of all pollutants that ranges from 69.75% to 69.84%. To conclude, the results of the analysis of both systems show that the grid-connected PV system is a feasible regardless of the costly initial costs of PVs. Author supplied keywords: HOMER; Energy; Renewable Energy; Conventional Energy; Power Generation; MATLAB; Control Strategy; Energy Management; Energy Control Method; Hospital Building; Technical Analysis; Economic Analysis; Technical and Economic Analysis of Solar Energy; Solar Energy; PV; Photovoltaic; Sustainable Energy; Optimisation; Optimization; Grid-connected PV system; Grid-connected; rooftop PV system; HOMER Software; Cost Optimisation for Power Generation; Cost Optimization for Power Generation; Cost Optimisation; Cost Optimization; Cost Reduction. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |