This Thesis carries out a high level analysis of the financial feasibility of building integrated small scale renewable energy systems. A number of alternative system configurations have been established that include a mixture of grid connected wind turbines and solar photovoltaic (PV) applications to provide electricity to meet the demand of the base load demand of the building, with any occurrence of excess production sold back to the grid. A methodology to account for an analysis of their feasibility has been developed. The methodology is based on a well-known clean energy system analysis tool, namely RETScreen. The local climate data has been extrapolated and calculations carried out using the RETScreen database and software. From this, the maximum initial financial investment of the systems has been estimated, based on a given financial hurdle rate (i.e. the annual financial interest return on initial investment) and the savings and income generated from reduced grid electricity consumption and selling electricity back to the grid. The methodology is applied to an academic building located in the city of Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland, with a hurdle rate set to 7%. Electricity generation scenarios include 4 systems with 3.6 - 15.2 kW of wind, and 21.5 kW of PV located on a flat roof of a building containing office space, lecture rooms and a large student break area. Of the considered systems, it was concluded that the most feasible system was the system with a mixture of 15.2 kW of installed wind capacity and 21.5 kW of installed solar PV capacity. In addition, the results suggested that even with the grant system in place in Sweden for solar PV systems, the solar PV part of the systems would likely not be feasible. Therefore it was suggested that future work in this area should involve an investigation of a purely wind power system be carried out, as well as to investigate the hourly demand of the building and the hourly potential supply of the renewable energy system. The building permit process, installation and energy resources and requirements and installation should also be researched further, including taking actual energy consumption readings from the building and installing climate measuring instruments in the proposed positions on the roof in order to achieve more accurate input data.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-347465 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Lee-Jones, David |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för geovetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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