Query: solar energy economic feasability

title: PROCESS SIMULATION AND ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF A SOLAR POWER PLANT USING ASPEN
abstract: The ASPEN process simulator and economic evaluation system were used to study the operating parameters and economic feasability of a 100 megawatt solar power plant. The system evaluated was the steam rankine cycle used in modern fossil fueled power plants, but fired by a central solar receiver and heliostat collector system. Plant size corresponds to an early commercial plant rather than a developmental pilot plant or large commercial plant. Fluid flowrate, and heating and power requirements for a typical plant cycle were determined using the ASPEN simulator subsystem. Results corresponded closely to process parameters for existing power plants. Economic analysis included capital and operating cost determination, equipment sizing, and profitability analysis. ASPEN results agreed with Department of Energy studies which showed the solar power generation concept to be a factor of two away from competitive selling price. Thesis Supervisor David K.

title: Solarisation of a seed drier in Mauritius
abstract: Drying agricultural food crops is very energy intensive. In Mauritius, much precious foreign exchange is imported annually for the sole purpose of drying crops in conventional industrial driers. The aim of this project is to investigate the technological and economic feasability of utilising solar energy to dry food crops. It is proposed to design, construct and test a solar system to be integrated to a conventional drier: the roof top, made of corrugated iron sheets, of the building housing the batch drier has been converted into a solar preheater.

title: What is the future of solar energy? Economic and policy barriers
abstract: The most important characteristics and limitations of solar energy were reviewed in this study. The analysis of different aspects indicated that the most important global challenges of solar energy development were climatic challenges, technical constraints, and unwillingness to make investments. After describing current conditions and predicting the future of solar energy, this study analyzed the policies formulated by developed countries to develop this from of energy. Accordingly, China has gotten ahead of other countries in this industry due to the technological production of solar panels and governmental supports. Finally, the economic estimation of solar energy was presented by dealing with the economic barriers to this form of energy in developed countries. According to the significant growth in the reduction of solar energy electricity production cost, this source of energy can be used as a major source in the future. It was then recommended to use a hybrid of solar energy with other sources such as wind to reduce the costs.

title: Building facade integrated solar thermal collectors: Energy economic performance and indoor comfort simulation model of a water based prototype for heating, cooling, and DHW production
abstract: This paper presents the design and the thermodynamic analysis of a new prototype of flat plate solar thermal collector, suitable for building integration, using water as working fluid. The main novelty of the proposed solar thermal collector is the use of cheap materials and simple design solutions, taken into account with the aim to reduce the manufacturing and installation costs towards the improvement of the market penetration of this technology in the near term future. The collector is suitable for domestic hot water production and for space heating and cooling, achieved through the use of adsorption chillers. A suitable dynamic simulation model for the system energy, comfort, economic, and environmental performance assessment is developed by taking into account both active and passive effects related to the building integration of the solar collector. The developed simulation model, implemented in a suitable MatLab computer tool, is experimentally validated; the main results of the validation process are discussed in this paper. Moreover, in order to show the potential of the presented building integrated collector prototype and of the related simulation tool, a suitable case study is developed. It refers to a residential unit of a multi floor building where the prototype collectors are integrated on the South facade. Simulations are carried out for 2 building envelope weights and 9 different weather zones. Interesting outcomes from the energy, economic, environmental, and comfort point of views are obtained.

title: Energy, economic and environmental performance of a solar rooftop photovoltaic system in India
abstract: Solar rooftop photovoltaic technology has matured enough to fulfil the decentralised electricity needs for India in a sustainable way. In the present study, four rooftop solar photovoltaic systems of different capacity have been selected to evaluate the energy, economic and environmental performance. It has been observed that the PR of rooftop PV systems lies from 75.70 84.81% and EPBT ranges from 5.31 6.14 years. The minimum cost of electricity of rooftop PV system calculated 2.88 INR/kWh at the 5% interest rate considering the 30 year of lifespan. It has been concluded that annual energy generation and system cost influence the payback period and the cost of electricity. It has been seen that rooftop PV systems have great potential for emission reduction from the atmosphere.

title: Energetic and economic evaluation of hybrid solar energy systems in a residential net zero energy building
abstract: Net zero energy buildings are playing a critical role in the decarbonization of future cities since the buildings are responsible for 30 40% of total energy consumption. A residential net zero energy building with a prospect of commercialization was introduced, which adopts solar energy systems and heat insulation solar glass that simultaneously generates electric power and minimizes heat loss. Dynamic and parametric simulation models were developed based on the TRNSYS platform and were validated by experimental data or standard test reports. A multi criteria decision making framework based on the energetic and economic criteria was developed to evaluate system performance and to find the favorable layout of the energy system in the residential net zero energy building. Twelve system scenarios, covering the individual heat insulation solar glass system, the hybrid systems integrated with solar PV, solar thermal and heat insulation solar glass, and the hybrid systems combined solar thermal and heat insulation solar glass, were comparatively assessed. Among the system scenarios inclusive of solar thermal technology, a combination of the compound parabolic concentrated solar collector and variable effect absorption chiller is highly recommended. However, the system scenario, which consists of a specific PV area of 8.4 m2/kW and employs heat insulation solar glass, is most favorable due to a highest primary energy saving ratio of 1.05 and a lowest levelized total cost of 5920 US$/year. All system scenarios proposed herein are not economically feasible at the current economic parameters in Singapore's climate. However, the optimized hybrid system (integrated with solar PV, solar thermal and heat insulation solar glass) is sufficient to reach the net zero energy target while the optimized solar PV system combined heat insulation solar glass is a solution of the positive energy building.

title: Thermo economic assessment and retrofitting of an existing electrical power plant with solar energy under different operational modes and part load conditions
abstract: This paper investigates operational modification of 250 MW Rajaee natural gas fired electrical power plant by supplying a portion of the required heat load from the solar energy source. The base case and the introduced hybrid system, both are simulated in Thermoflow and MATLAB softwares. Simulation of parabolic collector solar field in both methods of power boosting and fuel saving is performed by MATLAB. An economic analysis is done and optimal solar contribution is calculated. The obtained results specify that in solar aided electrical power generation mode can reach higher thermal efficiency in comparison with the using natural gas as fuel. In this case, with utilizing the solar field (120,000 m2) the thermal efficiency extends from 37.0% to 39.1% The electrical power generation by employing 7.00% of solar heat energy, up to 24.0 MW can be improved. In the fuel saving mode, the gross annual cutbacks of the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions rates for a 12 x 104 m2 solar collector receiver are 35,125 x 103 kg and 11,164 x 103 kg; respectively. The electrical power generation costs and fuel consumption rate saving are 80.0 US$/kWh. Also, period of return for the electrical power generation mode is six years.

title: Comparative environmental and economic performance of solar energy integrated methanol production systems in China
abstract: Conventional coal gasification to methanol technology in China results in serious environmental problems. Therefore, a great number of studies focus on the low carbon solutions for methanol production. Our work analyzed and compared the life cycle environmental and economic performance of solar energy integrated methanol production systems in China with the aid of GaBi software. There are three methanol production routes involved in our study: conventional coal to methanol system (Baseline case) solar energy coupled with coal gasification to methanol system (Case 1) solar energy biomass assisted CO2 hydrogenation to methanol system (Case 2) The results indicate that the environmental impacts of Case 1 and Case 2 are at least 45.7% and 57.5% smaller than the selected impact categories of baseline case, respectively. In Case 2, the utilization of biomass integrated gasification combined cycle (Bio IGCC) with CO2 capture system leads to negative life cycle greenhouse gas emission 1092.1 kgCO2eq/ton) of the whole system. However, in economic aspect, the methanol cost of Case 1 and Case 2 is about 3 times and 5 times that of Baseline case (1593.4 RMB/ton) If considering the average carbon tax level (500 RMB/ton CO2eq) in 2030 reported by World Bank, the Case 1 route is expected to be economic feasible in the near future, while the Case 2 is still difficult to have economic advantage compared with the Baseline case. The key to solving the cost problem of Case 2 lies in developing highly efficient photovoltaic electricity generation and biomass integrated gasification combined cycle system, decreasing the capital cost of solar photovoltaic power station, biomass integrated gasification combined cycle station and polymer electrolyte membrane modules for water electrolysis.

title: Global Solar Energy availability model and use in relationship to Ecological Human imprint: Economic Sustainability Impact and Assessment
abstract: The present study is to assess the solar energy extraction from the global Earth land, the continuation demands and the availability use in relation to human population growth in the world through the modeling of different scenarios. For the last few years, global energy becomes the most important commodity for the continuation the life on this Earth. This is due to the decreasing the non renewable resources such as oil. According to our model, the human population growth in the world will be between 9.5 to 11.00 billion people living on this earth by year 2050 at the current trend of human population growth rate, and we may be facing with shortening of availability of energy. It is important to stress that the energy should be replenished through non tradition energy supply, but we have to concentrate on the renewable energy, which we can develop to the extent of harvesting this energy in efficient ways. An example for the needs of energy from the land is to calculate how much the Earth can be supporting the human beings. For this regard, if each human being is required to live daily is in need for 2000 calories/per day on an average from the food. This means that the global Earth size has to produce about 15000 billion calories/day and 5475000 billion calories per year as the current estimate of human population of the earth (i.e. 7.5 billion people in year 2017) The question is the Earth can produce these calories to support 7.5 billion people, and we need more calories when the human population grows to be more than 9.5 billion people in the year 2050 in this Earth. This is only for the food that we are consuming and what about another required energy necessity for our continuation of life for production of other commodities that we are in need such as energy for fulling our cars, trucks and other factories. Therefore, solar engineering harvesting from the Earth should be important, and we have to think how we accomplish it. Additionally, we need to sustain our environment by conserving our water resources, and keeping our global climate environmentally in best condition to sustain the land economic and social standards. Further, in this paper, we are discussing the impacts of changing different parameters that affect global energy in this Earth, and what are the useful lessons that we can learn from it. Furthermore, we assess the availability of solarenergy and how to harvest and economic aspects of it. This will lead to sustainability of non renewable resources such as oil.

title: Outlook of solar energy in Europe based on economic growth characteristics
abstract: Solar power production in Europe has raised from about 130 MW to 110 GW of installed capacity (corresponding to 90 GWh to 120 TWh in annual electricity generation) during the present century. Together with wind power, it constitutes the largest growth within renewable energy sources in the last decades. At present however, clear signs of saturation can be observed in the leading areas of solar power in Europe. Here, the development of solar power in Europe is analysed and, for the three leading countries (Germany, Italy, Spain) a logistic growth path at the national level and a proportionality between saturation level of the growth curve of each country and its gross domestic product (GDP) is found. The sum of the next three countries (France, UK, Belgium) is well described by a logistic path with a time offset relative to the first group of three, and the sum of the two logistic paths, representing in total about 85% of European solar power production, describes the growth pattern in the corresponding area very well. Based on this, an estimate of a future saturation level for solar power in Europe is obtained by extrapolation. Finally, a model based on logistic growth patterns and learning curves that links solar power production data to investment data, is proposed. The proposed model is validated and calibrated on historical European data and extrapolated into the future. In a future scenario where European investments continue to decrease, a saturation level that is fully in line with our GDP based 200 TWh/y estimate is found and the application of the findings is discussed in a global context.