Rooftop photovoltaics:sizing, markets and resource balancing in small communities

Abstract. The photovoltaic potential of Finnish rooftops in small-scale energy communities has been acknowledged in case studies and research among economic and technology studies. This is a Bachelor’s thesis about the future expectations of rooftop photovoltaic generation in finnish housing companies. The renewable energy sources are becoming increasingly popular as taxing and energy expenses from polluting energy generation such as fossil fuel technologies are raising electricity prices for consumers. The methodology of this study is a literature review of legal, economic and technical research from recent years. The important interpretation requires connecting the important parameters such as self-sustainability, efficiency, payback time and demand flexibility compared to initial investments on renewable energy. The smart grid load balancing is affected by micro-generation in communities and online data services are needed to follow optimal sizing for the available technology included in small-scale energy production. On the other hand it is argued that the technology equipment used for solar arrays including transportation, wiring and batteries are not yet recycled or resourced sustainably. That is why wind and nuclear are involved in an energy transition where new technologies are tested in energy communities and an environmentally friendly image is redefined. Larger consumption patterns for housing companies are likely if smart appliances such as smart meters and electric cars are integrated to housing and transportation with the result of digitalization. Connecting hardware and software is why housing communities could provide management in shared online platforms for smart electricity sharing and energy market economic interests.Aurinkosähkön tuotanto katolla : mitoitus, markkinapaikat ja resurssien tasapainottaminen pienissä yhteisöissä. Tiivistelmä. Suomalaisten kattojen aurinkosähköpotentiaali pienen mittakaavan energiayhteisöissä on tunnustettu talous- ja teknologiatutkimuksen projekteissa ja tutkimuksessa. Tämä on kandidaatintutkielma tulevaisuuden näkökulmista aurinkosähkön tuotantoon taloyhtiöiden katoilla Suomessa. Uusiutuvista energialähteistä on tulossa yhä suositumpia, sillä saastuttavan energiantuotannon, kuten fossiilisten polttoaineiden teknologioiden, verottaminen ja energiakustannukset nostavat sähkön hintoja kuluttajille. Tämän tutkimuksen menetelmä on kirjallisuuskatsaus viime vuosien oikeudelliseen, taloudelliseen ja tekniseen tutkimukseen. Tulkintojen tarkkuutta edellyttää tärkeiden parametrien, kuten tuotannon omavaraisuuden, tehokkuuden, takaisinmaksuajan ja kysynnän joustavuuden yhdistämistä verrattuna uusiutuviin energialähteisiin tehtäviin alkuinvestointeihin. Älyverkon kuormituksen tasapainottamiseen vaikuttaa mikrotuotanto yhteisöissä ja virtuaalisia datapalveluja tarvitaan, jotta voidaan noudattaa optimaalista mitoitusta energian pientuotantoon käytettävissä olevalle tekniikalle. Toisaalta on väitetty, että aurinkosähköjärjestelmiin, kuten kuljetukseen, johdotukseen ja akkuihin, käytettäviä sähkölaitteita ei ole vielä kierrätetty tai tai niiden tuotantoa järjestetty kestävästi. Siksi myös tuuli- ja ydinvoima ovat mukana energiatalouden muodonmuutoksessa, jossa uusia teknologioita testataan energiayhteisöissä ja ympäristöystävällisyyden käsite voidaan määritellään uudelleen. Taloyhtiöiden laajenevat kulutustottumukset ovat todennäköisiä älylaitteiden, kuten uuden sukupolven sähkömittarien ja sähköautojen integroitumisessa asumiseen ja liikenteeseen digitalisaation tuloksena. Teknologisten laitteistojen ja ohjelmistojen yhdistäminen on syy siihen, miksi taloyhtiöt voivat toimia jaetuilla verkkoalustoilla älykkään sähkön jakamisen ja energiamarkkinoiden taloudellisten etujen saavuttamiseksi

Planning and operation objectives of public electric vehicle charging infrastructures: a review

Planning public electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure has gradually become a key factor in the electrification of mobility and decarbonization of the transport sector. In order to achieve a high level of electrification in mobility, in recent years, different studies have been presented, proposing novel practices and methodologies for the planning and operation of electric vehicles charging infrastructure. In this paper, the authors present an up-to-date analysis of the existing literature in this research field, organized by considering the perspectives and objectives of the principal actors/operators of the EV public charging infrastructure value chain. Among these actors, the electric vehicle, the charging operators and service providers, and the power system infrastructure (transmission and distribution system) are analyzed in depth. By classifying the reviewed literature based on this manifold viewpoints approach, this paper aims to facilitate researchers and technology developers in exploring the state-of-the-art methodologies for each actor’s perspective, and identify conflicting interests and synergies in charging infrastructure operation and planning.The authors would like to thank the Research Council of Norway and industry partners for the support in writing this paper under project 295133/E20FuChar—Grid and Charging Infrastructure of the Future https://prosjektbanken.forskningsradet.no/en/project/FORISS/295133?Kilde=F ORISS&distribution=Ar&chart=bar&calcType=funding&Sprak=no&sortBy=score&sortOrder=desc& resultCount=30&offset=0&Fritekst=fuchar&source=FORISS&projectId=295133 (accessed on 23 June 2023). The authors gratefully acknowledge Michele Garau, Bendik Nybakk Torsæter, and Daniel Mota from SINTEF Energy Research for their contribution to the conceptualization and review of the article. The work of Andreas Sumper was supported by the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) Academia Program.Postprint (published version

Optimal location of charging stations in smart cities: A points of interest based approach

Electric vehicles (EV) have become one of the most promising transportation alternatives in recent years. Due to continuously increasing gas prices and CO2 taxes, while at the same time subsidies of electrified cars run into millions, many countries such as the USA, UK, and Germany intend to bring large amounts of EVs onto their roads in the near future. As a prerequisite, an adequate charging infrastructure is needed to supply these vehicles with electrical fuel. In this paper we present a point of interest based business intelligence system to determine the optimal locations for charging stations. The underlying methodology is exploiting the potential of Big Data by analyzing and evaluating real charging sessions on the one hand and urban trip destination for vehicle owners on the other hand. Based on that, we formulate schemes to calculate an optimal charging infrastructure. A case study for Amsterdam and Brussels validates our results

Optimization and Integration of Electric Vehicle Charging System in Coupled Transportation and Distribution Networks

With the development of the EV market, the demand for charging facilities is growing rapidly. The rapid increase in Electric Vehicle and different market factors bring challenges to the prediction of the penetration rate of EV number. The estimates of the uptake rate of EVs for light passenger use vary widely with some scenarios gradual and others aggressive. And there have been many effects on EV penetration rate from incentives, tax breaks, and market price. Given this background, this research is devoted to addressing a stochastic joint planning framework for both EV charging system and distribution network where the EV behaviours in both transportation network and electrical system are considered. And the planning issue is formulated as a multi-objective model with both the capital investment cost and service convenience optimized. The optimal planning of EV charging system in the urban area is the target geographical planning area in this work where the service radius and driving distance is relatively limited. The mathematical modelling of EV driving and charging behaviour in the urban area is developed

Implementation of second-life batteries as energy storage systems enhancing the interoperability and flexibility of the energy infrastructure in tertiary buildings

The main focus of this project is to evaluate the implementation of second-life batteries for a building stock enabling the energy flexibility schemes like Demand Response (DR). This project will focus particularly on how the building stock and its energy infrastructure (energy storage systems, legacy-assets, communication devices and grid architecture, among others) can participate as innovative energy solutions of the next generation of smart-grids, acting as virtual power plants (VPP) in order to deploy the distributed generation (DG) concept in the actual energy field and paving the way to unlock the demand response (DR) market in the distribution energy network. In addition, the implementation of these technologies will led to plan different business models and the scalability of them in the tertiary building sector. Battery energy storage systems (BESSs) are already being deployed for several stationary applications in a techno-economical feasible way. This project focuses in the study to obtain potential revenues from BESSs built from EVs lithium-ion batteries with varying states of health (SoH). For this analysis, a stationary BESS sizing model is done, using the parameters of a 14 kWh new battery, but also doing a comparison with parameters if the same battery would be 11.2 kWh second-life battery. The comprehensive sizing model consists of several detailed sub-models, considering battery specifications, aging and an operational strategy plan, which allow a technical assessment through a determined time frame. Therefore, battery depreciation and energy losses are considered in this techno-economic analysis. Potential economical feasible applications of new and second-life batteries, such the integration of a Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV), self-consumption schemes, feed-in-tariff schemes and frequency regulation as well as their combined operation are compared. The research includes different electricity price scenarios mostly from the current Spanish energy market. The operation and integration of ICT-IoT technology upgrades is found to have the highest economic viability for this specific case study. A detailed study for this project will enhance the relevant importance of these topics in the energy field and how it will be a disruptive solution for the initial problem statement. A general context is given in order to introduce the main and specific objectives thus to trace an adequate way to follow and achieve them. The development of this master thesis will be coupled with the Demand Response Integration technologies (DRIvE) [10] H2020 EU funded project, currently on-going, considering some of the energy consumption data and initial parameters from the selected case study at COMSA Corporación office building in Barcelona, Spain

Influencing Effective Electrical Distribution Modernization through Advanced Metering

In 2013, the Department of Defense (DoD) required its services to implement advanced metering for the purpose of reducing energy usage (Department of Defense, 2013). Additionally, the DoD has aimed to improve its ability to assure a continuous energy supply to all of its installations. This study investigated processes for applying advanced meters on Air Force bases to increase energy assurance. This study also identified strategies for using advanced meters to influence infrastructure funding. This was accomplished through the use of extensive advanced meter data. The data was analyzed for outages and a procedure was created to locate outages in energy usage datasets by using means and standard deviations. Advanced meters with more frequent data collection were able to locate outages easier than meters with less frequent data collection. Advanced meters do not only reduce energy usage, but they also have the ability to report outages. By collecting outage data, funding can be applied to the least reliable electrical infrastructure

A Multi-Modality Mobility Concept for a Small Package Delivery UAV

This paper will discuss a different approach to the typical notional small package delivery drone concept. Most delivery drone concepts employ a point-to-point aerial delivery CONOPS (Concept of Operations) from a warehouse directly to the front or back yards of a customers residence or a commercial office space. Instead, the proposed approach is somewhat analogous to current postal deliveries: a small aerial vehicle flies from a warehouse to designated neighborhood VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) landing spots where the aerial vehicle then converts to a "roadable" (ground-mobility) vehicle that then transits on sidewalks and/or bicycle paths till it arrives to the residence/office drop-off points. This concept and associated platform or vehicle will be referred in this paper as MICHAEL (Multimodal Intra-City Hauling and Aerial-Effected Logistics) concept. It is suggested that the MICHAEL concept potentially results in a more community friendly "delivery drone" approach

Three Network Design Problems for Community Energy Storage

In this paper, we develop novel mathematical models to optimize utilization of community energy storage (CES) by clustering prosumers and consumers into energy sharing communities/microgrids in the context of a smart city. Three different microgrid configurations are modeled using a unifying mixed-integer linear programming formulation. These configurations represent three different business models, namely: the island model, the interconnected model, and the Energy Service Companies model. The proposed mathematical formulations determine the optimal households' aggregation as well as the location and sizing of CES. To overcome the computational challenges of treating operational decisions within a multi-period decision making framework, we also propose a decomposition approach to accelerate the computational time needed to solve larger instances. We conduct a case study based on real power consumption, power generation, and location network data from Cambridge, MA. Our mathematical models and the underlying algorithmic framework can be used in operational and strategic planning studies on smart grids to incentivize the communitarian distributed renewable energy generation and to improve the self-consumption and self-sufficiency of the energy sharing community. The models are also targeted to policymakers of smart cities, utility companies, and Energy Service Companies as the proposed models support decision making on renewable energy related projects investments

ANOMALY INFERENCE BASED ON HETEROGENEOUS DATA SOURCES IN AN ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

Harnessing the heterogeneous data sets would improve system observability. While the current metering infrastructure in distribution network has been utilized for the operational purpose to tackle abnormal events, such as weather-related disturbance, the new normal we face today can be at a greater magnitude. Strengthening the inter-dependencies as well as incorporating new crowd-sourced information can enhance operational aspects such as system reconfigurability under extreme conditions. Such resilience is crucial to the recovery of any catastrophic events. In this dissertation, it is focused on the anomaly of potential foul play within an electrical distribution system, both primary and secondary networks as well as its potential to relate to other feeders from other utilities. The distributed generation has been part of the smart grid mission, the addition can be prone to electronic manipulation. This dissertation provides a comprehensive establishment in the emerging platform where the computing resources have been ubiquitous in the electrical distribution network. The topics covered in this thesis is wide-ranging where the anomaly inference includes load modeling and profile enhancement from other sources to infer of topological changes in the primary distribution network. While metering infrastructure has been the technological deployment to enable remote-controlled capability on the dis-connectors, this scholarly contribution represents the critical knowledge of new paradigm to address security-related issues, such as, irregularity (tampering by individuals) as well as potential malware (a large-scale form) that can massively manipulate the existing network control variables, resulting into large impact to the power grid