Social, cultural and policy issues of the application of remote area off-grid photovoltaic

Globally, the PV market is growing rapidly with a total installed capacity of more than 100GW at this time. Many of the existing PV electrification projects fall short of expectations by not meeting their objectives. A lot of these projects have not taken into account the social and cultural issues of the community, nor its future development. Experience from other programs suggested that, to implement a solar PV system, the people have to understand and accept its reliability compared to the unreliability of the grid. Cultural acceptance is a “must” to make the project work successfully over a long time, thereby improving the project’s sustainability. It is emphasised that we should include community participation while working on electricity access. If the community is not involved, people will not take on projects to support them as their own. It is also important to define a community, its characteristics and limits, and to identify the local legitimised decision-making process. An analysis of the community’s perspective would help our understanding in developing project. This paper explains the social, cultural and policy issues of remote area PV applications in the light of current projects in developing countries

Identifying the determinants of residential electricity consumption for social housing in Perth, Western Australia

The residential sector contributes significantly to the overall energy consumption in Australia. A survey was undertaken to provide an indication of the determinants of electricity consumption in Perth Social Housing in Western Australia. The household survey provided a range of information about a number of building and occupant-related factors, including floor area, household size, disposable household income, occupancy hours, Head of Household (HoH) gender, presence of children in the households and occupants’ window opening behaviour that may influence the consumption in the dwellings. Outcomes of the research revealed that the floor area, household size, disposable household income and HoH gender are significant in explaining the variation in electricity consumption of the sample households. Other factors such as the presence of children in the household and window opening behaviour of the building users, however, did not precisely explain the changes in the households’ electricity usage. It is concluded that further studies into the determinants discussed in this paper are required to support the findings and gain a better understanding of the impact of these factors on electricity consumption in Western Australia (WA)

A policy framework and industry roadmap model for sustainable oil palm biomass electricity generation in Malaysia

The current global trends demonstrate the significant role of renewable energy in meeting the growing energy demand across all sectors to support national economic growth. In Malaysia, palm oil is one of the major agricultural export commodities with a total production of 17.7 million tonnes or 41% of the total world palm oil production in 2008. This research evaluates the sustainability of the grid-connected oil palm biomass renewable energy industry in Malaysia and proposes a policy framework and industry roadmap. The factors investigated include resource supply, the efficiency of waste to energy conversion technology used in the existing plants, and the attractiveness of the electricity interconnection scheme in encouraging exports of excess power from the participating mills to the main grid. A literature review and field survey were conducted to understand the barriers and possible enhancements to the current FiT system. The study concluded that harmonisation between upstream and downstream palm oil agricultural activities is essential for achieving the goal of making the oil palm biomass waste to energy industry sustainable. The policy framework and industrial roadmap models provide a distinctive enhancement to the FiT system besides indicating the way towards a sustainable biomass to the energy industry

A survey of the views of program implementers on success factors of solar PV programs in Asia and the Pacific

Much effort has been invested in identifying the important barriers to the widespread take-up of renewable energy systems and in using information to develop best practice guidelines for the implementation of rural renewable energy electrification programs in developing countries. Many renewable electrification programs have been implemented in developing countries of Asia and the Pacific to improve the quality of life of the people living in remote rural areas. Those that have been successful demonstrate that a market for household renewable energy systems can be developed quickly and efficiently given the right combination of institutional, financial and policy instruments. The literature indicates, however, that a number of these programs have met with limited success. Much effort has been invested in attempting to identify the reasons behind this lack of success. Understanding the reasons behind the limited success of some programs, and for the relatively high success of others, is important as this information can inform program implementers and improve the success rates of future programs. Most of the research effort to date has focused on the identification of barriers to the widespread take-up of renewable energy systems and this information has been used in the development of best practice guidelines for the implementation of these programs. This narrow focus on barriers, however, does not consider other important factors behind the success of programs. An email survey of those implementing programs in SE Asian and Pacific countries was therefore undertaken with the aim of obtaining the views of program implementers on not only what barriers they see as hindering the uptake, but also on what essential factors they consider need to be included in designing and implementing programs in order ensure program success and the criteria to measure the program success

Rooftop wind monitoring campaigns for small wind turbine applications: Effect of sampling rate and averaging period

Small wind turbines are often sited in more complex environments than the open terrain sites assumed in relevant installation guidelines or in the international small wind turbine design standard IEC61400-2. The built environment is an example of such a complex environment and installation of small wind turbines on the rooftops of high buildings has been suggested by architects and project developers as a potential means of incorporating sustainable energy generation into building design. In the absence of guidelines for installing wind turbines in the built environment, two key wind measurement parameters are the rate at which a data acquisition system (DAQ) samples the sensor, and the period over which the sampled data is averaged.This paper presents the results of the effect of sampling rate and averaging period on turbulence measurements from a monitoring system on a building rooftop, in order to inform the process of developing guidelines. The results will inform the development of a Recommended Practice of wind resource assessment in the built environment, via the International Energy Agency Task 27. The key finding of the paper is that, in general, 10Hz sampling and 10min averaging period give upper estimates for turbulence intensity and maximum values of the turbulence power spectra. Using these conservative values in the design of the turbine may be the best approach to ensure that the turbine can handle both the fatigue loads and resonance due to gusts

Seasonal effect of dust on the degradation of PV modules performance deployed in different climate areas

The aim of this study is to investigate the seasonal effect of dust on the degradation of PV modules deployed in two different climate areas, Perth, Western Australia, a temperate climate region and Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT), Indonesia, a tropical climate region. Results revealed that PV performance varied with season. In Perth, the performance of PV modules which was maximal in the beginning of summer decreased significantly at the end of the season. The performance then increased back approaching the initial position at the end of autumn and reached a peak at the end of winter. Similar reduction to the summer’s performance was accounted by the modules at the end of spring. Meanwhile, in NTT, the performance of PV modules was maximal in the beginning of wet season, dropped slightly at the end of the season and decreased significantly at the end of dry season. Degradation of all modules in the two sites was more affected by dust compared to the non-dust related factors. The degradation is important information for future PV design in both areas, especially in NTT which accounted greater values than the typical dust de-rating factors

Examining the potential for developing women-led solar PV enterprises in rural Myanmar

Access to electricity is limited in rural areas of Myanmar, where the majority of the population live. Myanmar's rich solar resource and the recent price drop in solar PV modules indicate initial suitability for rural solar electrification systems to meet the electricity demand. In many parts of Myanmar, women are responsible for supporting the family financially. The ability of rural women in Myanmar to take advantage of solar PV powered services to improve their lives depends on concurrent progress towards addressing the many dimensions of gender equality - empowerment, health, education, opportunity, voice, representation, and livelihood-in rural locations. This paper examines the barriers of solar PV applications and the potential for women led solar PV enterprise development in rural Myanmar. Although the entrepreneurial process is the same for men and women in theory, in practice different factors e.g. social/cultural, religion, economic and educational ultimately result in the disadvantaged status of women-led enterprises. Therefore, widespread and long-term eventuation of this potential in Myanmar depends on a government committed to renewable energy resources for rural electrification and to diligently and holistically addressing geographical, political, educational, financial, ethnic and technical barriers to the empowerment of a rural, female population

Prediction of indoor temperature in an institutional building

The importance of predicting building indoor temperature is inevitable to execute an effective energy management strategy in an institutional building. An accurate prediction of building indoor temperature not only contributes to improved thermal comfort conditions but also has a role in building heating and cooling energy conservation. To predict the indoor temperature accurately, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been used in this study because of its performance superiority to deal with the time-series data as cited in past studies. Network architecture is the most important part of ANN for predicting accurately without overfitting the data. In this study, as a part of determining the optimal network architecture, important input parameters related to the output has been sorted out first. Next, prediction models have been developed for building indoor temperature using real data. Initially, spring season of Australia was selected for data collection. During model development three different training algorithms have been used and the performance of these training algorithms has been evaluated in this study based on prediction accuracy, generalization capability and iteration time to train the algorithm. From results Lovenberg-Marquardt has been found the best-suited training algorithm for short-term prediction of indoor space temperature. Afterwards, residual analysis has been used as a technique to verify the validation result. Finally, the result has been justified by applying a similar approach to another building case and using two different weather data-sets of two different seasons: summer and winter of Australia

Modelling the structural loading of a small wind turbine at a highly turbulent site via modifications to the Kaimal turbulence spectra

Although, wind turbines have traditionally been sited in open terrain, there is a growing trend of installing turbines in non-homogeneous terrain, such as urban areas. Recorded urban turbine failures suggest that turbine design has been inadequate for the turbulence experienced at these sites and hence a better understanding of the turbine-loading issues in the built environment is required. This paper compares turbine blade load statistics for inflow turbulence fields based on the open terrain standard Kaimal spectra, as suggested in the standard IEC61400-2 that covers the design and safety standard of small wind turbines, and measured turbulence spectra from a built environment site. The findings show that for extreme, high turbulent intensity winds, the measured spectra predict isolated loading events around twice the magnitude of loads predicted by use of the standard spectra. The work suggests the need for improvements to the standard in order to model the non-Gaussian wind statistics that occur in extreme events such as sudden strong gusts

Energy and economic losses caused by dust on residential photovoltaic (PV) systems deployed in different climate areas

Results of the study revealed that when dust impinged on the surface of the PV modules, monthly maximum power output of a 1.5 kWp system in Perth, Australia and a 50 Wp system in Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT), Indonesia decreased, on average, by about 4.5% and 8%, respectively. Economic modelling showed that, the cost of production per kWh lost due to dust exhibited by these systems were A$0.26/kWh and A$ 0.15/kWh, respectively. Comparison of the cost of energy losses and maintenance revealed that, the Perth system would require manual cleaning in October while the system in NTT would require cleaning in August and October. Although the saving in production losses is not economically significant, this cleaning schedule was recommended, particularly for small systems in NTT since the extra output can have a significant effect on the quality of life in remote villages. The key finding was that higher dust de-rating factors and more cleaning activity may be more appropriate for PV systems deployed in tropical climate areas than that in temperate climate regions. It is recommended that PV system Standards that use the 5% performance de-rating factor due to soiling are reviewed and consideration given to climate-dependent de-rating factors