Renewable energy modelling

• Main Author: Bindal Dhruv
• Other Authors: Douglas Leslie Maskell
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computer applications::Physical sciences and engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/59226
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

There has been an equivocal and continuing rise in the average temperature of the Earth’s climate over the past few decades. Singapore has already seen rises in sea levels and neighbouring countries have been experiencing intense storms and tropical cyclones. Under such conditions, it has become imperative that alternative sources of energy, which can reduce our carbon footprint, be utilized. Given Singapore’s prominent position in Asia’s Sunbelt, solar energy displays tremendous potential to provide a clean alternative source of energy. Although there are many studies for solar photovoltaic systems and their deployment, there aren’t many that have done it in context to a tropical climate like Singapore’s. This study provides insight into the intermittent nature of solar energy in such regions, while discussing and analysing low concentrating photovoltaic systems, solar site diversity, time characteristics of solar irradiance levels and simulating energy storage systems to accompany photovoltaic cells. In this study, it was found that V-trough systems are the most effective low concentrating photovoltaic systems and that for various solar configurations, 2 axis tracking yields the highest amount of power. It was also observed that on a moderately cloudy day, two solar photovoltaic sites, under the same climatic conditions, can have huge differences in irradiance received for a given point in time. The intermittence, caused due to moving clouds, typically has a time period of 5 minutes or less and the reliability of the output can be improved greatly by an energy storage system, with a capacity as small as 5Wh.