ESD.71 Marticello (Community Level Solar Energy System) 1 Final Application Portfolio Community Level Solar Energy System Daniel Marticello ESD.71 Fall 2010 Professor deNeufville Michel-Alexandre Cardin Howard Ka-Ho YueESD.71 Marticello (Community Level Solar Energy System) 2 Abstract The engineering system under analysis is a single home within a community-level solar energy system. The goal was to effectively model the home’s electricity consumption across an entire 20-year system life span. The simulation included solar arrays for power generation, a flywheel for energy storage as well as uncertain inputs for grid provided electricity price growth rates. Decision rules were established to determine whether or not to increase the size of the solar array based that were dependent on potential year to year increases in electricity prices. Even with government subsidies included, the system was not profitable in any scenario tested. This is largely due to the high capital expenses combined with energy savings totaling under $1,000/year per home. With a discount rate of 10%, these savings were insufficient to turn the enterprise profitable. Modeling more than one home may allow economies of scale to be realized through the use of demand response load leveling. However, significant financial savings are realistic only if electricity prices increase significantly or capital costs, especially for the flywheel energy storage system, decrease considerably. Another aspect often considered when exploring the utility of such a system is the benefit it provides to the environment. In this case, use of the system would result in a reduction of approximately 6.8 metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere per home per year. Acknowledgements Special thanks to Howard Yue for his advice on mechanizing my model. His advice was instrumental in handling a system with so many data points.ESD.71 Marticello (Community Level Solar Energy System) 3 Contents Abstract.......................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... 2 1.0 System Definition............................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Scope of Study................................................................................................................. 5 2.0 Model Structure................................................................................................................. 6 2.1 Solar Energy / Solar Panel Output............................................................................... 6 2.2 Consumption Profile...................................................................................................... 8 2.3 Energy Storage ............................................................................................................... 9 2.5 Government Subsidies ................................................................................................. 11 2.6 Simulation Decision Rules........................................................................................... 11 3.0 Deterministic Design Results .......................................................................................... 12 4.0 Results with Flexibility Incorporated ............................................................................ 13 5.0 Conclusions....................................................................................................................... 15 6.0 Reflections......................................................................................................................... 16 7.0 Next Step........................................................................................................................... 17 8.0 References......................................................................................................................... 18 ESD.71 Marticello (Community Level Solar Energy System) 4 1.0 System Definition The engineering system being explored is a community-level solar energy system. Rather than each individual home in a community or housing development attempting to employ alternative energy source such as solar panels individually, I am curious if there are economies of scale for a system designed to operate at the community level. Figure 1 System Overview Graphic Figure 1 shows a top-level overview of the complete system. The system’s operation is best described over the course of a 24-hour cycle: • 12 am midnight (0000 hrs) The cycle begins at midnight when lower cost, off-peak power from the grid is used to recharge the community energy storage bank. This bank is envisioned to be a set of flywheels which would “spin up” converting electrical power into rotational kinetic energy. • 6am-5pm (0600-1700 hrs) Beginning between 6 and 9am when people start to begin the day through the morning “rush hour” period, power is sourced from the energy storage bank to the houses avoiding the need for more expensive, peak power from the grid. This is done by converting rotational kinetic energyESD.71 Marticello (Community Level Solar Energy System) 5 back into electrical power. Simultaneously, as the sun rises, electricity is generated by the community’s solar arrays. Solar power is generated throughout the day which is then used to provide power to the houses with any excess going first to the energy storage bank and secondly back to the grid for a credit. • 5pm-12am (1700-0000 hrs) In the late afternoon when solar energy available starts to decline and people return home from the day’s activities, energy usage peaks. Power is again pulled from the energy storage bank as well as the grid as necessary to cover the energy needs of the community during the evening’s peak activities. The cycle then repeats again late in the night when charging of the energy storage bank is repeated. The potential advantages of this system over independent systems installed by homeowners include the ability to spread the costs of power generation and storage equipment across many homes. Another advantage is the homes in the development