Search Results (2)

The abandonment of conventional sources in favor of energy from renewable energy sources (RES) has a global dimension, and the dynamic increase in the share of energy from photovoltaic systems in the energy mix of many countries results from the possibility of obtaining it both on a small scale (micro-installations) and as part of economic investments (photovoltaic power plants). The study aimed to assess the economic efficiency of 22 photovoltaic farms located in northeastern Poland. The research covered 5 solar power plants with a capacity of up to 799 kWp (I), 13 between 800 and 1100 kWp (II), and 4 installations of 1.98 MWp (III). The evaluation was based on net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), payback period (PP), profitability index (PI), accounting rate of return (ARR). Additionally, a sensitivity analysis was carried out regarding the value of economic indicators. The analysis shows that all studied PV farms are economically justified investments (NPV > 0) regardless of the adopted scenario. Solar power plants of the largest analyzed capacity (group III) resulted in being the most profitable ones, but no linear relationship between the level of productivity and profitability was established. Due to the large variation in terrain shape in northeastern Poland, landscape value and social benefits, which are difficult to assess, the support system for investments regarding the construction of photovoltaic power plants proved to be the most effective in group I. Full article

In a global world, the human population invariably increases while resources gradually decrease as cities and towns constantly consume resources to satisfy their needs and requirements. At this point, it is very necessary to focus on making these urban areas more sustainable and greener. The need for some advanced and automated systems improves the situation, which leads to the innovation of smart cities. Smart city is the concept that helps in developing sustainable cities via optimized resource utilization methods. In smart city development, various sensing technologies can be used that can sense and utilize natural resources in better ways, like storing rainwater to use afterward, intelligent and smart control system, smart infrastructure monitoring system, smart healthcare system, smart transportation system, and smart system for energy consumption and generation by various facilities. To make the city smart and sustainable with efficient energy consumption, we propose renewable solar and wind energy-enabled hybrid heating and cooling HVAC-DHW (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning-Domestic Hot Water) system in which energy consumption is evaluated using optimized NARX-ANN and fuzzy controller based on user needs, dynamic behavior of the atmospheric environment, and spatial distribution of energy supply. To achieve the proposed goal, first, via sensor, heating and cooling effect of environment and building is sensed and these sensed inputs are then fed into deep-learning-based NARX-ANN that forecast internal building temperature. This forecasted temperature is fed into a fuzzy controller for optimizing output based on user demand. This processed information leads to energy distribution based on their requirement using a smart energy sensing system. Based on the experimentation result and performance analysis, it was found that the proposed system is more robust and has a high control response in comparison to the existing systems with minimum energy consumption. The analytical results support the feasibility of the proposed framework architecture to facilitate energy conserving in smart city buildings. Full article