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Green Six Sigma and Clean Energy
Published in Ron Basu, The Green Six Sigma Handbook, 2023
Like wind, sunlight is one of our most abundant and freely available resources. Solar energy is absorbed in specially designed and manufactured solar panels to generate electricity directly. Solar panels are made out of photovoltaic cells (or PV cells) that convert the Sun’s energy into electricity. A single PV cell can produce typically around 0.58 Volts. PV cells are sandwiched between layers of silicon. When hit by photons from sunlight each layer creates an electric field that creates the direct current (DC) needed to produce electricity. This current is then passed through an inverter to convert it into an alternating current (AC) which then can be connected to the national grid or used by a building with solar panels. Solar energy is carbon free and renewable and thus has many benefits including its diverse applications for generating both electricity and heat, as well as its low maintenance costs. However, there are disadvantages such as the initial high cost, weather dependency and storage expenses.
Performance Degradation in Solar Modules
Published in Bhavnesh Kumar, Bhanu Pratap, Vivek Shrivastava, Artificial Intelligence for Solar Photovoltaic Systems, 2023
The manufacturer guarantees for the performance of solar panels for 25–30 years, though it may be possible that the panel continues to produce electricity even after that period. Such a period of 25–30 years is known as the useful life of the panel. It has been evident that world’s first commercial panel is still in operation after 50 years of its installation. Like other equipment, solar panels also do not offer the same efficiency throughout their lifespan from their first installation till the end of their useful life, i.e., 25 or 30 years as mentioned by its manufacturer. Solar panel’s conversion efficiency eventually decreases over the period or as it ages, though at a slower rate. This phenomenon is known as “Degradation.” All solar panels slowly degrade over time, which means they are producing less electricity from the same amount of irradiation as it ages. A variety of external factors (like weather) cause such negative impacts on their ability to produce electricity. Manufacturers typically guarantee 90% of the panels’ production up to the end of the first ten years and then after ten years, that percentage falls to 80 for the remaining useful lifespan of 15–20 years. The solar modules may continue to convert sunlight into electricity. However, depending on financial perspective, one may decide to go for replacement of panels with the latest modules, offering better conversion efficiency.
Review of power converters
Published in V.S.K.V. Harish, Amit Vilas Sant, Arun Kumar, Renewable Energy Integration with Building Energy Systems, 2022
Amit Vilas Sant, Meet Patel, V.S.K.V. Harish
Solar and wind energy are employed for electric power generation. More and more countries are implementing legislative measures to facilitate and encourage renewable energy system-based electric power generation. Wind energy conversion systems harvest the kinetic energy of the wind, converting it into rotational energy and finally into electrical energy. Wind turbines are responsible for the conversion of the kinetic energy of the wind into mechanical energy. Similarly, electric generators convert this mechanical energy into electrical energy. Moreover, only a small operating range is available for electric power generation. In solar systems, photovoltaic panels are employed to convert solar energy into electrical energy. The output of the photovoltaic panel is dc, whereas the grid, as well as the majority of the loads, requires ac supply. Electric power generation from renewable energy sources is highly dependent on environmental conditions.
Industrial processes and the smart grid: overcoming the variability of renewables by using built-in process storage and intelligent control strategies
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2023
Yunzhi Chen, Blake W. Billings, Kody M. Powell
Solar energy generation is not constant and varies depending on the season, time of the day, and weather conditions. The one-year solar energy generation pattern at the facility site is shown in Figure S2. Figure 4 compares the 5-day electricity demand patterns of the solar array scenario to the baseline scenario in June and December. Solar panels generate solar energy, which contributes to electricity usage savings. As summarised in Table 3, the annual electricity usage savings of the solar array scenario total 10.03 GWh, which is 3.6% less than the baseline scenario. The electricity peak demand however may be reduced only occasionally by solar power generation because the periodic demand valleys produced by solar energy might not coincide with the peak demand. For example, the peak demand of the facility does not coincide with the solar production in June (Figure 4 (a)), and thus has no impact on the reduction in electricity demand. The peak demand coincides with solar production in December (Figure 4 (b)), and solar energy contributes to the demand savings in this situation. As Table 3 demonstrates, only five of the twelve-month periods in this case study actually result in demand savings, yielding annual demand savings of 833 kW, which is a 0.2% reduction from the baseline scenario.
A novel single phase grid connected solar photovoltaic system for state of charge estimation using recurrent neural networks
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2023
Elango Kannan, Maheswari Avudaiappan, Saravanan Kaliyaperumal, Suresh Muthusamy, Santhiya Pandiyan, Hitesh Panchal, Kannan Manickam, Chandrasekar Shanmugam
The concern toward the exploration for substituting the fossil fuels with greenhouse emission-free sources has shown a rapid increase. These renewable sources are pollution free, sustainable, and climate friendly. In recent days, solar energy is regarded as a promising renewable source for energy industries. The solar photovoltaic (PV) panel, one of the solar technologies, directly converts the sunlight into electricity depending on one or two semi-conducting material layers. Generally, the integration of photovoltaic system into stand-alone and grid-connected systems is widely opted in several applications (Vanaja et al. 2022). The integration of PV into electrical grid is being encouraged and funded by many developing countries (Ndirangu et al. 2022). There exist few issues during the integration of solar PV to the grid such as improper synchronization and power quality. Currently, researchers still focus on improving the harvested energy from PV panels. However, partial shading, thermal gradients, dirt on PV panel surface, aging, and mismatches induced by manufacturing tolerances result in energy losses (Stonier and Lehman 2017). This in turn seeks the usage of DC–DC and DC–AC converters in grid-connected PV systems for paying attention toward input current ripple, voltage level, and normalized voltage stress across semiconductors (Haixiong et al. 2020).
A combined energy system consisting of fuel cell, water electrolyzer and solar technologies to produce hydrogen fuel and electricity
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2022
Jing Li, Chunyun Gao, Xutao Lu, Ali Hoseyni
As seen in Figure 1, the proposed energy system is composed of an electrolyzer, the solar PV panels and dish collectors with an SOFC to produce hydrogen fuel, heat, and electricity. The electrolyzer produces hydrogen fuel by receiving water, heat, and electricity. Water, electricity and heat are supplied from water tank, solar PV panels and dish collectors, respectively. Water enters the electrolyzer at a temperature of 25°C. Solar energy is converted into electricity by solar PV panels. Moreover, thermal energy is produced by irradiating sunlight to the dish collector and transferring heat to the working fluid. Thus, the electrolyzer produces hydrogen fuel by breaking down water into its constituent molecules. Hydrogen fuel can have a variety of applications, such as refueling vehicles. Another application is its use in refueling fuel cells to generate electrical and thermal energy. The energy obtained from the fuel cell can be more reliable compared to intermittent solar and wind energy. Therefore, the fuel and oxygen obtained from the electrolyzer are injected into an SOFC. In an SOFC, electricity is generated by electrochemical reactions with by-products of water and heat. It is assumed that the operating temperature of the SOFC and electrolyzer is the same (700°C). In addition, water is used as the heat transfer fluid of the dish collector. The following is the mathematical relationships required to model the energy system developed in MATLAB software.