Topics for Researchers in the Field of Renewable Energy
The topics listed below are range of topics that industries are facing and we are excited to collaborate with organizations and companies for solution developments.
Development of thermography monitoring system for small Scale PV systems
Thermography inspection is an essintial analysis for the solar PV systems where this could be used to monitor the performance of the generation. Currently, the thermography is limited to the large scale PV and done couple of times in a year. The proposal of this research is to develop a permanent thermography monitoring system for the small scale PV installed in the rooftop and connect to monitoring system for alarms.
Residential PV versus Utality Scale
The maximum energy generated in the grid using the renewable resources such as wind and solar are limited due to the intermittent. Hence, the capacity of those systems are limited. The electrical utilities companies might prefer the large scale of ground mounted systems than the scattered small scale PV systems in the buildings rooftop. However, the small scale rooftop has the advantage of short distance from the demand and hence save the transmission and distribution scope. This project is to investigate the impact and benefits of the residential PV versus the utility scale through the technical and economic analysis.
Energy storage for HVAC
Challenges:
- 75% of power is used for AC, major impact on the power grid.
- Higher energy cost during the peak daytime.
- The AC load is designed based on the peak load, i.e. portion of the capacity used for short period and kept it standby most of the year, higher operating cost.
- The AC equipment reduces its efficiency at high temperature (during daytime operation).
Solution:
Thermal storage could be the solution:
- Shift the beak load of HVAC to a low energy cost interval.
- Reduce the total equipment’s capacities for maximum load.
- Systems are more efficient at low ambient temperature (night operation).
- In the future, could be the solution for the energy storage from the PV systems, uses thermal storage at night in case of excess power.
Potentials of Pumped Hydropower Storage Technology in GCC : case of Dayqah Dam in Oman
The intermittent of the power generated by the renewable energy resources such as wind and solar due to the weather conditions and day and night variation brings the necessity of storage technologies to avoid any power shortage and increase the renewable energy share to higher levels. Various technologies have been developed to store the energy captured from the renewable energy such as the thermal energy using the concentrated solar power (CSP), Batteries Energy Storage System (BESS), Hydrogen, and gravity. Pumped Hydropower Storage is considered as relatively new concept for energy storage. It is mainly to store water in high reservoir using the power generated by the renewable energy and release the power when required by flowing water from the upper to the lower reservoir using hydropower turbines. The technology is believed to be promising as the turbines performance is high. GCC countries is classified as low rain region, hot and sunny around the year. As the results, a lot of dams have been constructed to store water in the groundwater for water security purposes. In addition, some dams have been constructed for the flooding protection purposes. Utilizing these dams in storing the energy could support the economics of the PHS and achieve competitive energy cost. The main objective of this study is to investigate technically and economically of retrofitting of dams to accommodate the PHS concepts by presenting a case study of utilizing one of the dam in Oman to generate electricity in a baseload using both floating PV and PHS. Dayqah dam is selected as the case study.
Energy Mix and the role of Energy Storage solutions for the deep decarponization
The objective of this study is to show the impact of the energy mix in the grid and how is the energy storage solutions can leverage the decarbonization to higher percentages.