MODELING AND ASSESSING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF DISTRIBUTED SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAICS ADOPTION

Participation of distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) generation in the organized electricity wholesale market is expected to increase under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order 2222 announced in 2020. Our understanding about the technical, economic, and environmental tradeoffs and co-benefits of solar PV adoption on both building and regional scales remains limited, especially considering the complexity of varied distributed solar PV-battery system designs and operation strategies as well as the dynamic interactions of these distributed generations with the centralized grid. This dissertation therefore aims to investigate the grid load reduction, life cycle cost, and life cycle environmental (e.g., carbon, water, and energy footprints) performances of typical distributed PV systems considering their dynamic interactions with the centralized grid. This dissertation intends to examine the possible scenarios in which future adoption of PV systems can facilitate economic saving, reduce environmental footprints, relieve centralized grid stress, and supplement differential electricity demands of residential energy users on both building and city scales. To this end, a modeling framework was developed consisting of a stochastic residential electricity demand model, a system dynamics model of solar energy generation, energy balance, storage, and selling, and life cycle economic and environmental assessment model. The stochastic residential electricity demand simulation considered five typical types of household occupants and eight types of households. The generated solar energy, grid supply, and residential demand were balanced for each residential building using energy balance model. This model was further scaled up to a city level using Boston, MA as a testbed. On the building level, we found a clear tradeoff between the life cycle cost and environmental savings when sizing the PV systems differently. Moreover, installing a solar PV-battery system but without an effective control strategy can result in sub-optimized peak-load reduction, economic, and environmental outcomes. Installing solar PV-battery systems with proper controls can achieve the highest on-peak load reductions and economic benefits under the time-of-use utility rate design. However, they do not necessarily provide the highest environmental benefits, indicating a potential technical, environmental, and economic tradeoff. Our regional analysis found a large penetration of solar PV systems may result in a steeper ramp-up of the grid load during winter days, but it may provide load-shedding benefits during summer days. Large buildings may perform the best technically and environmentally when adopting solar PV systems, but they may have higher life cycle costs

MODELING AND ASSESSING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF DISTRIBUTED SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAICS ADOPTION

Participation of distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) generation in the organized electricity wholesale market is expected to increase under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order 2222 announced in 2020. Our understanding about the technical, economic, and environmental tradeoffs and co-benefits of solar PV adoption on both building and regional scales remains limited, especially considering the complexity of varied distributed solar PV-battery system designs and operation strategies as well as the dynamic interactions of these distributed generations with the centralized grid. This dissertation therefore aims to investigate the grid load reduction, life cycle cost, and life cycle environmental (e.g., carbon, water, and energy footprints) performances of typical distributed PV systems considering their dynamic interactions with the centralized grid. This dissertation intends to examine the possible scenarios in which future adoption of PV systems can facilitate economic saving, reduce environmental footprints, relieve centralized grid stress, and supplement differential electricity demands of residential energy users on both building and city scales. To this end, a modeling framework was developed consisting of a stochastic residential electricity demand model, a system dynamics model of solar energy generation, energy balance, storage, and selling, and life cycle economic and environmental assessment model. The stochastic residential electricity demand simulation considered five typical types of household occupants and eight types of households. The generated solar energy, grid supply, and residential demand were balanced for each residential building using energy balance model. This model was further scaled up to a city level using Boston, MA as a testbed. On the building level, we found a clear tradeoff between the life cycle cost and environmental savings when sizing the PV systems differently. Moreover, installing a solar PV-battery system but without an effective control strategy can result in sub-optimized peak-load reduction, economic, and environmental outcomes. Installing solar PV-battery systems with proper controls can achieve the highest on-peak load reductions and economic benefits under the time-of-use utility rate design. However, they do not necessarily provide the highest environmental benefits, indicating a potential technical, environmental, and economic tradeoff. Our regional analysis found a large penetration of solar PV systems may result in a steeper ramp-up of the grid load during winter days, but it may provide load-shedding benefits during summer days. Large buildings may perform the best technically and environmentally when adopting solar PV systems, but they may have higher life cycle costs

Assessment of construction cost reduction of nearly zero energy dwellings in a life cycle perspective

Concerning Nearly Zero Energy Buildings, it is important to guarantee energy efficiency, thermal comfort and indoor environmental quality, while keeping construction and operational costs low. In this framework, this paper explores the efficacy of applying different scenarios, for reducing construction costs of new nearly zero energy multi-family houses in a life cycle perspective. Conversely to the standard cost-optimal approach, a real Italian case study building was chosen. Alternative and unconventional combinations of solutions for envelope and technical systems were adopted. Calculations were performed in two Italian cities (Rome and Turin). Three types of analysis were developed thermal comfort, energy performance and financial calculation. Results of the thermal analysis show that the installation of active cooling to prevent summer overheating can be avoided by applying low-cost passive strategies. All the proposed low-cost scenarios (4 alternative scenarios in Rome and 5 in Turin)reached the highest grade of energy performance, with a reduction of the non-renewable primary energy consumption up to 46% compared to the base case in Rome and 18% in Turin. From the economic perspective, all the scenarios in the two climate zones allow both reductions in the construction costs, up to 26% in Rome and 15% in Turin, and a Net Present Value after 50 years up to 163 €/m2 in Rome and 158 €/m2 in Turin

Integrating IVHM and Asset Design

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) describes a set of capabilities that enable effective and efficient maintenance and operation of the target vehicle. It accounts for the collection of data, conducting analysis, and supporting the decision-making process for sustainment and operation. The design of IVHM systems endeavours to account for all causes of failure in a disciplined, systems engineering, manner. With industry striving to reduce through-life cost, IVHM is a powerful tool to give forewarning of impending failure and hence control over the outcome. Benefits have been realised from this approach across a number of different sectors but, hindering our ability to realise further benefit from this maturing technology, is the fact that IVHM is still treated as added on to the design of the asset, rather than being a sub-system in its own right, fully integrated with the asset design. The elevation and integration of IVHM in this way will enable architectures to be chosen that accommodate health ready sub-systems from the supply chain and design trade-offs to be made, to name but two major benefits. Barriers to IVHM being integrated with the asset design are examined in this paper. The paper presents progress in overcoming them, and suggests potential solutions for those that remain. It addresses the IVHM system design from a systems engineering perspective and the integration with the asset design will be described within an industrial design process

Deriving a systematic approach to changeable manufacturing system design

It has long been argued that Factories are long life and complex products. The complexity of designing factories, and their underlying manufacturing systems, is further amplified when dealing with continuously changing customer demands. At the same time, due to research fragmentation, little if any scientific explanations are available supporting and exploiting the paradigm that "factories are products". In order to address this weakness, this paper presents research results arising from a comparative analysis of systematic "product design" and "manufacturing system design" approaches. The contribution emerging from this research is an integrated systematic design approach to changeable manufacturing systems, based on scientific concepts founded upon product design theories, and is explained through a case study in the paper. This research is part of collaboration between the CERU University of Malta and IAO Fraunhofer aimed at developing a digital decision support tool for planning changeable manufacturing systems.peer-reviewe

Eco Global Evaluation: Cross Benefits of Economic and Ecological Evaluation

This paper highlights the complementarities of cost and environmental evaluation in a sustainable approach. Starting with the needs and limits for whole product lifecycle evaluation, this paper begins with the modeling, data capture and performance indicator aspects. In a second step, the information issue, regarding the whole lifecycle of the product is addressed. In order to go further than the economical evaluations/assessment, the value concept (for a product or a service) is discussed. Value could combine functional requirements, cost objectives and environmental impact. Finally, knowledge issues which address the complexity of integrating multi-disciplinary expertise to the whole lifecycle of a product are discussing.EcoSD NetworkEcoSD networ

Integrating IVHM and asset design

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) describes a set of capabilities that enable effective and efficient maintenance and operation of the target vehicle. It accounts for the collecting of data, conducting analysis, and supporting the decision-making process for sustainment and operation. The design of IVHM systems endeavours to account for all causes of failure in a disciplined, systems engineering, manner. With industry striving to reduce through-life cost, IVHM is a powerful tool to give forewarning of impending failure and hence control over the outcome. Benefits have been realised from this approach across a number of different sectors but, hindering our ability to realise further benefit from this maturing technology, is the fact that IVHM is still treated as added on to the design of the asset, rather than being a sub-system in its own right, fully integrated with the asset design. The elevation and integration of IVHM in this way will enable architectures to be chosen that accommodate health ready sub-systems from the supply chain and design trade-offs to be made, to name but two major benefits. Barriers to IVHM being integrated with the asset design are examined in this paper. The paper presents progress in overcoming them, and suggests potential solutions for those that remain. It addresses the IVHM system design from a systems engineering perspective and the integration with the asset design will be described within an industrial design process