NEE4207 Alternative Energies This lab takes a "top down" view of renewable grids. It looks in "macro" terms at the behaviour of the renewable sources. We ignore for the moment the issues of integrating new sources into the grid, and focus on creating renewable grids from scratch. Objective A city from the top 1000 largest cities in the world is required to be chosen to a renewable grid to meet the energy needs of the city. It is assumed that the city has energy demand that is typical of the country in which it resides (e.g. New York has US level energy demand and Bangok has Thai level). Although in some situations it may make good sense to share energy generation capacity between cities (e.g. Sydney and Melbourne), assume for this lab that each city is independent and has its own grid. For the purpose of this project, the economic considerations are ignired (e.g. the carbon price level). The focus is only on generating a technically feasible renewable grid solution. A reasonable assessment of the availability of renewable sources needs to be undertaken. Therefore,physically impossible scenarios should be avoided: for example it is impossible to place a large wind farm in the middle of Hong Kong, but quite feasible to place a large solar thermal generator farm in western China. This paroject is only concerned with the monthly availability of a resource on average. There is no need to consider the day to day variation (e.g. will the wind blow/ sun shine today?) Background Renewable sources such as wind and solar have semi-predictable variable behaviour. Design of a renewable grid must take into account the variable nature. For example, in winter the solar resource is less than in summer. Take as input the NASA long term data. To complement the variable resource, you can add base load power from other alternative energies. In most cases the generating sources cannot be placed close to the city. For this lab, assume that HVDC links are used to transport the energy. A model for this type of grid is the Desertec proposal for powering Europe from Northern Africa. Key Questions 1. How efficient is a solar thermal power station in converting incoming solar energy to electricity? 2. What is the capacity factor for a typical wind farm in your selected location? 3. How much energy is lost over the length of your HVDC links? OutcomesA graphical description of your grid, with physical locations of each generator indicated. Grid links displayed. It is not necessary to give a detailed electrical design of your grid, but link capacities should be indicated. Monthly analysis of your grid design in terms of energy balance: surplus/deficit for each month. Justify your design from the viewpoint of relative mix of energy sources: for example, if you have a totally wind based solution, why have you excluded solar or geothermal, biomass? Where you have a mix of sources, why this percentage mix? Assessment Submit in a document of no more than 15 pages in total, including references, appendices, diagrams etc. Technical feasibility of grid proposal 30% Performance analysis 30% Explanation and justification for design 30% Overall quality of presentation 10% How to submit Please submit a paper copy of your report to your tutor and send an electronic copy to tutor's email. Resources/References • Lecture notes • NASA solar, wind data : http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/sse/ • Energy demand for countries: http://www.iea.org/ • Desertec: http://www.desertec.org/ • D. Weisser, A wind energy analysis of Grenada: an estimation using the `Weibull' density function, Renewable Energy, Volume 28, Issue 11, September 2003, Pages 1803-1812, ISSN 0960-1481, DOI: 10.1016/S0960-1481(03)00016-8. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V4S-487MW79- 1/2/bc6cba73c196f0f32984d8a2a0066dcb) Henrik Lund : http://energy.plan.aau.dk/ REG : http://renewablegrid.appspot.com (currently under construction: available soon)