Solar Project -
1. Energy Data Collection: Collect the energy consumed by your residence (apartment, house, etc.). Minimum is a six-month period that covers July, August and September. Ideally, you would want to consider collecting it for a full year. If your home is heated by electric power (not gas), whole year collection might also be helpful to get some months during the winter covered. With data on hand, please plot the following:
a. Hourly consumption over a day, plotted for a full week.
b. Daily consumption plotted over a month.
c. Monthly consumption over the months that you are considering for your analysis.
2. Energy Analysis and Calculation:
a. Identify the times of peak power usage during a day in the hourly charts plotted for a week. Do the same for daily charts plotted for a month and monthly charts for the analysis period. Explain why you think the house had peak power consumption during these times.
b. Identify differences in daily consumption (if any) between weekdays and weekends. Explain the source of such variations.
c. Calculate the average, mean, min and max for each month. Calculate the average, mean, min and max for the entire period that you have considered. Based on the averages, estimate the total energy consumption of the house over a 12-month period (state assumptions that you are using for periods not covered by data such as the winter months.). If you have plotted for a full 12-month period, just sum up the monthly consumptions for your total annual consumption.
3. Appliance Audit: List sources of energy consumption. Make your audit comprehensive. List should include all major appliances (microwaves, dishwashers, cooking range, washing machine, water heaters if they are electric, etc.), lighting (total number of lights and their wattage), fans (ceiling and upright), air conditioner, space heaters if they are electric. Electric Vehicles (if any), vacuum cleaners, computers, TVs and other monitors, audio sound systems, and other items are regularly used. This should be in the form of an excel spreadsheet.
For all of the appliances in the list, write down the wattage (or power specification) of each item and the number of hours each item is used in a given week. List out the usage by each weekday and each weekend day. The usage should be based on your observation of how the appliances are used during weekdays and weekend days. So, explain how you got your usage information. This cannot be arbitrary and should reflect the normal lifestyle of the household. Please separate the usage during weekdays and weekends, as these will be different. The energy data should be entered in the same spreadsheet as the one used for the appliance audit.
Using the data, plot the daily usage over the same month in Problem 1 and compare. If there are differences between the plot made using appliances and from the meter data, please explain sources of discrepancies.
4. Solar System Design:
a. Discuss the layout of your house and determine the orientation of your solar system. Also determine the tilt angle that you will use for your solar system.
b. From the Solar Handbook in the class notes, determine the average daily solar irradiance per square meter available for each of the 12 months. For the highest daily solar irradiance, use the following algorithm, assuming that peak solar power collected occurs at 1pm.
i. Multiple the annual energy consumption by a factor > 1 to account for future increases in the household energy consumption. This will be your Effective Annual Energy Consumption.
ii. Assume collection starts at 6AM and ends at 7PM, and peak occurs at 1PM.
iii. The collected energy in KWh during the day will then be the area under the power curve. Using the formula, Area = 0.5 (Peak Solar Power X 13hrs) = Highest Daily Solar Irradiance, calculate the value of Peak Solar Irradiance.
iv. Select solar panel products that you want to consider and choose one panel (manufacturer and model number). For the model, use the nameplate efficiency in the spec sheet, and calculate the Peak Solar Power Collectable = Peak Solar Irradiance X Panel Efficiency. Make sure that the Panel PTC rating of the solar panel is higher that the Peak Power Collectable.
v. Now, Calculate the daily Solar Irradiance Collectable for each month.
Multiply each by the respective number of days in a month to get the monthly Solar Irradiance Collectable value. Then add all these numbers to get the annual Solar Irradiance Collectable value. The Total Area of Solar Panels required will be: (Effective Annual Energy Consumption) / (Annual Solar Irradiance Collectable).
vi. Total number of panels required is then (Total Area of Solar Panels) / (Panel Area of Selected Solar Product) rounded up to the next integer.
vii. For the panels selected, estimate the total cost using a factor of 33% of total cost for permits and installation.
5. Energy Efficiency (for 40 points): Discuss how you may be able to reduce your energy consumption by a minimum of 25%. Use the appliance and usage spreadsheet to describe the impact of each measure and justify your savings. Calculate the impact this would have on the total cost of the solar system that you have designed.
Need clear and accurate project.