Solar PV Stand Alone Design Project

EEE 498/591 Renewable Energy Technology and Systems

Project 1

Stand Alone PV System Design

Goal: The goal of the project is to design a small stand-alone PV system. The parts of the project are:

1. Specification of system design: goals, locations, etc. 2. Find the solar radiation and calculation of the power produced from a PV module over the course

of a year

3. Specification of load 4. Optimization of panels, tilt angle, batteries, etc. 5. Specification of other system parameters 6. Analysis of system performance, including sensitivity, cost, availability, etc.

1. Specification of System Design The specification of the system design involves choosing the specifics of the system you are going to

design. This includes deciding on the type of system you want to design. You have three choices:

a) Off-grid seasonal recreation cabin b) Off-grid conventional house c) Off-grid rural elementary school.

You also have three choices for the location: a) Phoenix AZ b) Denver CO c) Fargo ND

You also need to decide what the goals are – for example, is the goal to minimize cost with a certain availability or to ensure that the availability is at a given value, regardless of cost.

2. Solar Radiation on tilted surface The goal of the solar radiation is to calculate the power on a tilted surface. We will hand out an excel spread sheet that allows calculation of the power on a tilted surface. There are also multiple other

available calculators and databases. You may use any you like, as long as you can find the power from the

PV modules.

3. Specification of load You must specify the load by listing all the loads, their power usage and the amount of time they are used

per day. For simplicity, even if you have chosen a conventional house, group loads into categories do you

don’t have more than 10 loads. You don’t have to change the load every day, but depending on your chosen system, some seasonal variation is expected.

4. Optimization of the System This and the system analysis are the most significant sections of the assignment. You must optimize your system given the design constraints in the System Specification Overall, this section involves:

 What is the optimum tilt angle? Is this what you expected?

 What is the trade-off between PV size and battery size? Why does this trade-off exist?

 Calculate the availability of the system. Plot how it varies with PV size and battery size.

5. Specification of Other System Parameters

In this section, you need to give the components of the system other than the PV array and battery, and

very briefly indicate how these would be chosen (no more than one or two sentences for each component), and a list or table is fine.

6. System Analysis

In this section, you give and justify your design solution, including the system cost. This includes You must also explain any trade-offs in how you arrived at your optimum systems and why you chose this

answer. For example, you may find that reaching 95% availability is half the price of 97% available and

prioritize the lower cost system. Or, given your chosen system design, you may choose the higher availability system. Whatever your answer is, you must justify it. Overall, this section will:

 Calculate the cost of the PV system (just calculate PV and battery costs). How does this change with availability?

 How sensitive is your solution to design variables? For example, if you change the PV cost, how will your system change?

 What is your final design and why is the most appropriate for your system?