Session: 10-01: Alternative Energy Conversion Technology (including Wind, Geothermal, Hydro, and Ocean)

Paper Number: 130843

130843 - Formulating a Meteorological Year for Modeling Solar PV and Wind Turbine Electricity Harvest and Hydrogen Storage to Meet Electricity Demand in a Yearly Cycle 

Abstract: 

     It is the objective of this study to facilitate the design of an energy harvest and storage system so that a community can fully rely on solar energy to supply the electricity demand year-long with no interruptions. The electricity supply is accomplished by using solar PV electricity harvest, and planned energy storage via water electrolyzing for hydrogen production/storage and fuel cell electricity generation.  For the year-long cycled operation of such an energy system, the basic principle is that the energy storage from sunny days must meet the instantaneous electrical energy consumption, the nighttime power demand, as well as the energy demand at cloudy and overcast days in a long run.  For cost effectiveness of the energy system, a minimal solar harvest field and minimal energy storage capacity must be identified.  Therefore, the weather pattern and weather-dependent parameters for determining the amount of available renewable energy at any moment around the year must be provided as precisely as possible, which results in the need of formulating a meteorological year that is not from any specific year but generally represents the typical year of the interested location of the renewable energy power plant.  Obviously, the meteorological year should come from the historical record of weather data and should best predict the most probable future weather cycles in sufficiently small time-intervals. The data processing and formulating approach is called weather year generation methodology (WYGM). For solar energy alone, sky coverage percentage and ambient temperature are important factors. While zero sky coverage means fully sunny, 100% sky coverage means overcast. In this study we surveyed sky coverage data in a time resolution of 3 hours every day for the past 20 years of the Author’s local town, Tucson. For each time point, there are 20 sky coverage data available so that we can check the average, the worst, the best, and the most frequent occurred values. The integrated energy generation over the energy harvest field, the energy consumption by the community per day, and the energy storage/inventory are checked to meet the criterion that each day the energy inventory in the storage can meet the energy demand of that day. If the criterion is not met, the solar collection area is increased and the energy storage capacity increased until the criterion is satisfied. At this point, the solar collection area and the energy storage capacity are the minimum requirement that the renewable energy power plant must have in order to provide energy with no shortage around the year and the yearly cycle. The formulated meteorological year gives baseline data of weather for renewable energy power plant design. Large deviation of the weather data from the baseline may occur due to climate change. Therefore, the correction to the baseline results may be needed based on long-term weather forecast.

Presenting Author: Yasir Alfulayyih University of Arizona

Presenting Author Biography: Yasir Alfulayyih is a PhD candidate in Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona and is expected to obtain his Doctoral degree at the end of 2023. Yasir has studied thermal-science, heat transfer and fluid flow in fuel cells and renewable energy harvest, storage, and utilization. His recent work is about long-term (yearly) renewable energy forecast, planning of energy storage and dispatch to rely on renewable energies to supply power demand.

Authors:

Yasir Alfulayyih University of Arizona
Peiwen Li University of Arizona
Ammar Gwesha University of Arizona