Study of a grid-connected floating photovoltaic power plant of 1.0 MW installed capacity in Saudi Arabia.

To mitigate the environmental effects of burning fossil fuels for power generation, clean, self-renewing, and efficient technologies are being developed and used. Photovoltaics have received attention during the last decades to supplement conventional power production systems. Photovoltaic technology has advanced in the eyes of developers, policymakers, and investors due to the consistently falling costs of photovoltaic panels and improving control systems. Moreover, the efficiency of the photovoltaic is being taken care of by controlling temperature and inventing effective and economical ways of cleaning the panel surfaces. One of the solutions that can minimize the effect of temperature is the floating photovoltaic (FPV). In this study, a techno-economic feasibility study is conducted for constructing 1.0 MW capacity grid-connected FPV power plant in Saudi Arabia. Three locations (Riyadh, Mecca, and Bisha) are chosen where the FPV plants can be installed in water bodies. Meteorological data were obtained from PVSyst software, which is used for simulation purposes. Furthermore, FPV power plants are expected to reduce the evaporation rate from water bodies. The simulation study found the LCOE of 0.053, 0.057, and 0.063 $/KWh for Riyadh, Mecca, and Bisha; respectively. The FPV systems will reduce GHG emissions annually by 390,000 tCO2 at each site.

Performance evaluation of grid-connected photovoltaic system for Kuttiady village in Kerala, India.

To combat the adverse environmental effects of fossil fuel burning for power generation and to conserve it for strategic use, new, clean, and renewable energy sources are being utilized for power generation. The study presents techno-economic analysis of a grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant to partially meet the energy consumption of the people of Kuttiady village in Kerala, India. The proposed 2315.5 kW installed capacity PV is found to be feasible for the village and can produce 3878.3 MWh of energy annually while the demand is 4044.86 MWh at a plant capacity factor of 19.1% and cost of energy of 290.73 $/MWh. The performance of the proposed PV plant measured in terms of final yield (4.59 h), reference yield (5.64 h), and performance ratio (82%) is compatible and even higher with many such plants in India and other countries. Economic sensitivity analysis is also performed by varying the interest, discount, and inflation rates to check their effect on cost of energy, benefit cost ratio, and payback period. As the interest and discount rates decrease, the cost of energy and payback period also decreases while benefit cost ratio increases. The proposed plant can help in avoiding around 785 tons of greenhouse gases entering the local atmosphere of the Kuttiady village.

Thermal energy storage and thermal conductivity properties of fatty acid/fatty acid-grafted-CNTs and fatty acid/CNTs as novel composite phase change materials.

In recent year, fatty acids (FAs) are heavily studied for heat storage applications and they have shown promising advantages over other organic phase change materials (PCMs). Among the FAs; capric, palmitic and stearic acids are the most studied PCMs. Several researchers have investigated these FAs and tried to improve their thermal properties, mainly by adding different high conducting fillers, such as graphite, metal foams, CNTs, graphene etc. In most cases, these fillers improved the thermal conductivity and heat transfer property but reduce the heat storage capacity considerably. These composites also lose the mixing uniformity during the charging and discharging process. To overcome these issues, selected FAs were grafted on the functionalized CNT surfaces and used as conductive fillers to prepare FA based composite PCMs. This process significantly contributed to prevent the drastic reduction of the overall heat storage capacity and also showed better dispersion in both solid and liquid state. Thermal cycling test showed the variations in the thermal energy storage values of all composite PCMs, however, within the tolerable grade and they had appreciable phase change stability and good chemical stability even after 2,000 cycles.

Thermal energy storage and thermal conductivity properties of Octadecanol-MWCNT composite PCMs as promising organic heat storage materials.

Fatty alcohols have been identified as promising organic phase change materials (PCMs) for thermal energy storage, because of their suitable temperature range, nontoxicity and can be obtained from both natural and synthetic sources. Like all other organic PCMs, octadecanol (OD) as PCM suffers from low thermal conductivity (TC). In this work, to enhance its TC, it was grafted on the functionalized MWCNT and were used as a conductive filler to enhance overall thermal properties of OD in a composite PCM (CPCMs) structure. The OD/OD-g-MWCNT sample showed better dispersion within the composites and the presence of additional OD boosted the overall heat storage enthalpy compared to that of plane composite sample with OD/MWCNT. In a non-quantitative approach, it was observed that, any increase in grafting ratio of OD increases the heat storage enthalpy of the composites. The heat storage enthalpy of (267.7 J/g) OD/OD-g-MWCNT(4:1)-5wt% composite PCM had reached very close to the heat storage enthalpy value of pure OD (269.3 J/g), and much higher than that of OD/MWCNT-5wt% (234.5 J/g). Champion sample i.e. OD/OD-g-MWCNT (4:1)-5wt%, showed good heat storage enthalpy, cycling performance, thermal stability and TC enhancement by 262.5%.