Planning for Home Renewable Energy Systems

A special issue of Designs (ISSN 2411-9660). This special issue belongs to the section "Bioengineering Design".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2021) | Viewed by 12994

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
LUT School of Energy Systems, LUT University, P.O. Box 20, 53851 Lappeenranta, Finland
Interests: renewable energy systems; power-to-x; green hydrogen; energy efficiency

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Residential buildings consume a significant amount of energy and, therefore, cannot be neglected in the ongoing energy transition. Renewable electricity from solar PV and wind power will become the main primary energy sources and residential buildings will become flexible prosumers interacting with the power grid. Significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will be achieved while intelligent automation ensures that the standard of living is simultaneously increasing. This Special Issue on Planning for Home Renewable Energy Systems focuses on bringing original research and literature reviews from different areas related to renewable energy utilization in residential buildings. Manuscript topics include but are not limited to the areas mentioned as keywords below.

Dr. Vesa Ruuskanen
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • Renewable energy
  • Solar PV
  • Wind power
  • Heat pumps
  • Energy storage
  • Intelligent control
  • Vehicle-to-grid (V2G)
  • Net-zero buildings
  • Carbon neutral buildings
  • System integration

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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28 pages, 17145 KiB  
Article
Spraying Cooling System for PV Modules: Experimental Measurements for Temperature Trends Assessment and System Design Feasibility
by Alberto Benato, Anna Stoppato, Francesco De Vanna and Fabio Schiro
Designs 2021, 5(2), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/designs5020025 - 1 Apr 2021
Cited by 24 | Viewed by 6391
Abstract
The hallmark of the PhotoVoltaic (PV) electricity generation is its sustainability, while its main weakness is the low conversion efficiency. A drawback to which is added the PV cell sensitivity to temperature variations: the higher the cell operating temperature, the lower the efficiency. [...] Read more.
The hallmark of the PhotoVoltaic (PV) electricity generation is its sustainability, while its main weakness is the low conversion efficiency. A drawback to which is added the PV cell sensitivity to temperature variations: the higher the cell operating temperature, the lower the efficiency. Considering that in-operation modules reach a conversion efficiency in the range of 10 to 15%, there is an urgent need to control their temperature to enhance the electricity generation. To this purpose, the authors developed a PV spraying cooling system able to drastically knockdown modules operating temperature. Using experimental measurements acquired through a dedicated test rig and after an in-depth literature review, the authors analyze the nozzles number, geometry, and position, as well as water and module’s temperature distribution, limestones formation, degradation of front glass properties, water consumption, and module power production with and without the cooling system. The experimental campaign shows that a cooling system equipped with three nozzles with a spraying angle of 90°, powered by water at 1.5 bar and managed in ON/OFF mode (30 s on to 180 s off), can improve the module’s efficiency from 11.18% to 13.27% thanks to a temperature reduction of up to 24 °C. Despite the improvement in electricity production (from 178.88 W to 212.31 W per single module), at the time of writing, the equipment and installation costs as well as the plant arrangement complexity make the investment not eligible for financing also in the case of a 1 MW floating PV facilities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning for Home Renewable Energy Systems)
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23 pages, 4349 KiB  
Article
An Efficient Testing Scheme for Power-Balanceability of Power System Including Controllable and Fluctuating Power Devices
by Saher Javaid, Mineo Kaneko and Yasuo Tan
Designs 2020, 4(4), 48; https://doi.org/10.3390/designs4040048 - 25 Nov 2020
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2142
Abstract
Renewable power sources are environmentally friendly power generation systems, such as wind turbines or photovoltaics; however, the output power fluctuations due to the intermittence and variability of these power systems can greatly affect the quality and stability of the power system network. Furthermore, [...] Read more.
Renewable power sources are environmentally friendly power generation systems, such as wind turbines or photovoltaics; however, the output power fluctuations due to the intermittence and variability of these power systems can greatly affect the quality and stability of the power system network. Furthermore, the power fluctuations that are triggered by power load devices also have similar results on the power system. Therefore, it is essential to introduce power level control for controllable power devices and connection in order to lessen the effects of dynamic power fluctuations that are caused by fluctuating power source devices and load devices. The issue of power balancing as a part of power level control presented in this paper assigns power levels to controllable power devices and connections between power source devices and load devices to absorb dynamic power fluctuations. In this paper, we focus on power conservation law instead of detailed voltage or current-based network characterization and present a new power balanceability test for a power flow system that comprises of both fluctuating and controllable power devices. Our proposed power balanceability test can assure the existence of a power flow assignment of power devices and connections for any value of power generation and/or the consumption of fluctuating power devices. Our proposed power balanceability test method can be expressed as a linear programming problem, and it can be resolved in polynomial time complexity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning for Home Renewable Energy Systems)
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Review

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21 pages, 5586 KiB  
Review
Is Innovation Redesigning District Heating? A Systematic Literature Review
by Håkan Knutsson, Magnus Holmén and Kristina Lygnerud
Designs 2021, 5(1), 7; https://doi.org/10.3390/designs5010007 - 30 Jan 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3090
Abstract
The district heating (DH) industry has been characterized by continuous innovation for several decades, but there is limited knowledge on the characteristics of the sector’s innovation activities, arguably the most important information for understanding how the sector can continue to develop and further [...] Read more.
The district heating (DH) industry has been characterized by continuous innovation for several decades, but there is limited knowledge on the characteristics of the sector’s innovation activities, arguably the most important information for understanding how the sector can continue to develop and further support the energy transition of society. We perform a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify the types of innovation, the levels of innovation and the relation between different innovations in the DH sector. A total of 899 articles are analyzed and coded into eight groups: fuel, supply, distribution, transfer, DH system, city system, impact and business. Most of the articles (68%) were identified in the groups: “supply”, “DH system,” and “impact”, with a focus on DH from a system or production perspective and its environmental impact. We find that there is limited research on DH firms” challenges, including management perspectives, such as asset management and customer focus. Despite this potential, we find only a limited number of articles related to innovation. Not much scholarly attention has been given to areas of large cost-saving, especially capital cost. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning for Home Renewable Energy Systems)
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