Towards a digital workflow to assess visual impact of solar modules and their operation within energy-hubs

This study proposes an integrated methodology to assess the BIPV potential of existing urban neighborhoods, including social acceptance and grid infrastructure management issues; as a demonstration, a case study in Geneva, Switzerland is considered. In particular, the annual solar radiation on the outdoor exposed areas is calculated on an hourly basis and converted into electricity by considering standard monocrystalline PV modules. Social acceptability is evaluated on a discrete qualitative scale, based on the average visibility of the building envelope from the public space and assessed through a psychophysically reliable indicator. Three different envelope surface coverage ratios are assumed for BIPV, i.e. for low, medium and high visibility respectively. Renewable electricity generation is used to match the hourly electricity demand for lighting, appliances as well as an air-to-air heat pump that covers heating and cooling needs. Excess electricity is used within multi energy hubs featuring PV panels, a battery bank and an internal combustion generator; as a last resort, electricity is injected to the grid. As such, the levelized cost of energy and the grid integration level can be calculated at each time step. The financial outcome of the analysis may be used to explore novel business models for solar energy renovations in urban contexts.

Matching visual impact, solar energy production potential and energy system optimization for an enhanced solar integration. An experience with a novel pre-design tool

Silvia Coccolo, Pietro Florio, Amarasinghage Tharindu Dasun Perera, Jean-Louis Scartezzini

This study focuses on developing a BIPV pre-design computational platform combining visual impact assessment, building simulation and energy system optimization. The outdoor exposed surface of a pavilion court building block is evaluated through a physiologically reliable indicator of visibility that determines three scenarios of PV coverage ratio. Solar PV generation and demand for heating and electricity are simulated on hourly basis. Hourly PV energy that does not match electricity needs is used to fit a multi energy hub featuring PV panels, a battery bank and an internal combustion generator. A Pareto optimization is conducted considering levelized cost of energy and grid integration level, without showing a dominant solution: this outcome encourages the development of a Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) tool.

2018

Life Cycle Analysis and Thermo-Environomic Optimization of Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Plants

Aurélie Kuenlin

Confronted to resources depletion and the global warming, the humanity has to reduce its fossil fuels dependence. The renewable energy is an interesting option to reach this aim. The most powerful one is the solar energy since in few hours, the Earth receives more energy than the humanity consumes in one year. In order to convert this energy to electricity, the concentrated solar power plants (CSP) are more advantageous than photovoltaics (PV) because of the possibility to store the energy. Indeed, they concentrate with numerous mirrors the sunlight to heat up a ﬂuid which can be stored in a big insulated tank. Then, the heat energy is transferred to a steam which drives a turbine and a generator to produce electricity. Nowadays, this type of power plants has a real potential. The aim of this work is to test and conﬁrm that the CSP engender less environmental impacts than other types of power plants over their entire life cycle including production, operation and end of life. Furthermore, four different technologies of CSP (tower, parabolic trough, Fresnel and dish) are compared in order to ﬁnd the most efﬁcient one for the environment and identify their strong and weak points. Finally, multi-objectives optimizations, which consider economic and thermodynamic aspects, are performed to ﬁnd the optimal conﬁguration for each power plant. In this work, the environmental impacts are calculated by carrying out a life cycle analysis (LCA) with the Impact 2002+ method. It takes into account the damages on resources, climate change, human health and ecosystem quality. According to this study, the results indicate that CSP produce lightly less impacts than PV but much less impacts than fossil fuels energy. The comparisons between the different CSP reveal that the dish technology engenders less damages than other due to its high efﬁciency and less facilities. However, its investment costs are too important to be competitive. From the other hand, Fresnel and parabolic technologies produce too much environmental impacts for lower costs. The weak point of Fresnel is its very low efﬁciency and the disadvantage of parabolic is the use of a speciﬁc synthetic oil which is very harmful for the environment, without speaking of the possible spills. Moreover, the hybridation with natural gas of both technologies reduces their costs but increases considerably the impacts on climate change and resources categories. Finally, the tower technology is the most advantageous CSP regarding the impacts, the electricity production and costs. It does not need hybridation to have low costs and have an important storage capacity to produce electricity during nights and cloudy days. However, the investment is still too important to be more attractive than fossil fuel power plants. Therefore, there are two possibilities: to implement a CO2 tax of around 60$/MWh or to improve CSP technology. For the last option, the steel of the mirrors structure, which is the most harmful material according to LCA results, can be reduced and thus, the impacts and the costs will be lower. It can also be possible to use recycled steel or another material. Another hint is to build CSP in a very sunny regions with a DNI of at least 1750 kWh/m2 /yr with short transmission lines. Finally, it is important to increase as much as possible the efﬁciency of CSP to produce more energy and decrease the environmental impacts too.

2011

Modeling of mesoscale phenomena using WRF-BEP-BEM-CIM in a complex region

Sylvain Labedens, Dasaraden Mauree, Jean-Louis Scartezzini

A simulation tool (EcoSim) has been developed to analyse the economic and environmental aspects of the integration of several energy conversion units. For a given investment over 25 years, the tool calculates the self-consumption rate, the autonomy level, the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and the CO2 emissions. A neighbourhood is modelled using the Rhino software. Then the dynamic simulation software, CitySim Pro, determines the hourly energy demand and solar PV generation. Finally, the techno-economic and environmental parameters are calculated using EcoSim. For this neighbourhood located in Basel, the self-consumption rate is maximised by combining solar PV and battery. With the sale of locally produced electricity to the residents of the neighbourhood, we have shown that the implementation of such a self-consumption community leads to a more economically profitable situation as compared to the current case where electricity is bought from an industrial company.

IOP Science2019

Life Cycle Analysis and Thermo-Environomic Optimization of Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Plants

Aurélie Kuenlin

2011