Design and operation of renewable energy based distributed energy generation system
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Date
2014
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Publisher
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Abstract
Concerns over sustainability of fossil fuels, escalating petroleum prices and increasing awareness for the environment have encouraged countries all over the world to shift from the heavy reliance on fossil fuel to renewable energy (RE) resources for electricity generation. The distributed energy generation (DEG) system that operates within the distribution network that fits the criteria of future needs of smart and efficient energy system could therefore be the best platform to implement RE. However, in order to achieve an optimal DEG system in terms of cost and efficiency, the designing and scheduling process could be rather difficult and complex. Among the factors taken into consideration during the planning stage include; i) intermittency and operation of RE especially for solar energy systems which are weather oriented; ii) manipulation of supply load through integration of energy storage (ES) system for peak shaving; and iii) manipulation of demand load through load shifting (LS) for peak shaving. Taking these factors into account, new optimisation methodologies are introduced in this thesis, specifically, a targeting technique based on Pinch Analysis known as the Electric System Cascade Analysis (ESCA). The technique was then expanded in to a mathematical model for a more holistic investigation. In Malaysia, developments of RE and DEG are currently focused on Iskandar Malaysia (IM) which is set with the goal to be developed as the low carbon city. Compared to many other countries which focus on wind energy as their main RE for low carbon development, IM which lacks of wind energy instead considers other RE resources such as biomass, biogas (both from palm oil resources) and solar energy, as they are the most promising RE resources to simultaneously reduce the dependency on fossil fuels as well as providence of environmental benefit in the region of IM. Palm oil mills (POM), being a biomass and biogas collection point, having sufficient land area for solar energy systems, and located distances away from a centralised grid system could therefore gain much benefits from a DEG system. Thus it was taken as the case study for the optimisation techniques developed in this thesis. The case study on the POM includes optimal DEG system design and operation (electricity and heat) of the mill as well as the local residential community. The application of the model on an eco-community and industrial case study has demonstrated the applicability of the model to design an optimal cost competitive DEG system. Through this study, it shows that implementation of DEG system within IM is indeed feasible
Description
Thesis (PhD. (Chemical Engineering))
Keywords
Renewable energy sources—Research, Renewable energy sources—Malaysia, Distributed generation of electric power