Solar Energy

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Solar power and battery storage systems provide on-grid and off-grid energy output to ensure reliable electricity flow even during critical outages.

Roseau Valley, Dominica – The island of Dominica is one step closer to its goal of becoming a completely climate-resilient country with two new solar microgrids. Dominica’s Ministry of Education has officially announced the addition of solar energy and battery energy storage systems to two elementary schools – Morne Prosper and Paix Bouche – with support from the Clara Lionel Foundation (CLF) and RMI, founded as the Rocky Mountain Institute. both serve as hurricane shelters.

Microgrids provide 10 kilowatts of solar power and 76 kilowatt-hours of battery storage to provide reliable power during normal business hours and during major outages such as hurricanes.

The Dominica Schools Microgrid Project involved rebuilding Morne Prosper Primary School and Paix Bouche Primary School, which were severely damaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017, and installing sustainable energy systems in the schools to provide a safe and secure learning environment for their students. hurricane shelters for communities.

CLF and RMI provided financial and technical assistance for this project in close cooperation with local community members. This includes engaging communities to build long-term knowledge about the direct benefits of solar and battery energy storage systems. The Dominica Schools Microgrid Project serves as a proof point for how solar energy and storage systems can maintain community vitality by increasing energy resilience during intensifying climate-related hurricanes.

“We hope that by focusing on this landmark event and through regional focus, this project is already achieved (at the 2023 Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum). [CREF] awards), which will be a catalyst to invest in larger climate and energy resilience initiatives both nationally and throughout the Caribbean region,” said Ije Ikoku Okeke, Managing Director of RMI’s Catalytic Climate Capital (C3) and Global South programs.

“One of our key goals was to demonstrate how successful stakeholder collaboration can support building a more sustainable environment and scaling up clean energy,” said Krystle Francis, who serves as director of programs (Caribbean) for CLF. “And not just in Dominica, but in the wider region. We hope that the project has the ability to attract more attention to other institutions to fund similar projects throughout the Caribbean.

Watch our video to learn more:

About RMI: Founded in 1982 as the Rocky Mountain Institute, RMI is an independent nonprofit organization transforming global energy systems through market-based solutions to adapt to a 1.5°C future and ensure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future for all. We work in the world’s most critical geographies and engage businesses, policymakers, communities and NGOs to identify and scale up energy system interventions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030. RMI has offices in Basalt and Boulder, Colorado; New York City; Oakland, California; Washington, DC; Nigeria; and Beijing. Learn more at www.rmi.org and follow us on LinkedIn @RMI.

About CLF: The Clara Lionel Foundation (CLF) was established in 2012 by Robyn “Rihanna” Fenty in honor of her grandparents, Clara and Lionel Braithwaite. CLF invests in climate justice and climate resilience initiatives in the Caribbean and the United States, and helps communities prepare for and withstand natural disasters.

© 2024 Rocky Mountain Institute. Published with permission. Courtesy of RMI.

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A team of Chinese scientists has developed an artificial intelligence tool that can help find the best location to install double-sided solar panels, thereby filling a critical data gap in the green energy industry. their single-faced counterparts. According to the researchers, placing them in the eastern Tibetan Plateau and other places in northwest China could help maximize solar energy production. The energy production potential of a double-sided photovoltaic (PV) panel is highly dependent on how much diffuse solar radiation reaches its backside. , the team explained in a paper last month in the peer-reviewed Journal of Remote Sensing.

01:36

China’s largest photovoltaic power plant is driving the development of a new form of energy

China’s largest photovoltaic power plant is driving the development of a new form of energy

Under the right sunlight conditions, double-sided solar panels can produce more energy than conventional panels. However, they are difficult to transport and store, so finding the optimal location for them is critical to ensure the best use of resources.

However, there is no information to help determine the best locations to place double-sided solar panels.

There are a total of 17 radiation stations in the country that collect data on the amount and type of “solar energy” available at a given location. This includes information on direct radiation from the sun directly onto the front surface of the solar panel and diffuse radiation that is scattered by the atmosphere and more likely to be captured by the back face of the panel.

The equipment in these stations requires annual adjustment and regular maintenance, which leads to significant operating costs.

To overcome the lack of local data, researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing and the National Tibetan Plateau Data Center created an artificial intelligence model based on sunlight data from 2,500 weather stations across China.

Artificial intelligence is trained on solar radiation data and surface meteorological data collected through ground observation or satellite remote sensing to predict the amount of direct and indirect radiation at any given point.

“In principle, this model can be applied globally without additional training with local data,” the team wrote.

According to the study, China needs 10 times more energy from solar and wind to become carbon neutral

Lead author Yang Kun, a professor in the department of earth system sciences at Tsinghua, said the lack of comprehensive radiation data means there is little information to help authorities and the solar industry plan areas for installing panels.

“Now, the output of an artificial intelligence model supported by satellite data can inform decision-making about where and what type of panels to place to take full advantage of solar energy,” Yang said.

Solar energy will account for about 5 percent of China’s electricity generation in 2022.

Yang said the AI ​​system also revealed the solar potential of China’s remote areas without power line infrastructure, which could inspire future research and policy planning.

China generates half the amount of electricity in the western deserts as the United States

First author Shao Changkun, a PhD candidate at Tsinghua, said the area surrounding the Taklamakan Desert in the southwestern part of Xinjiang Autonomous Region and the eastern Tibetan Plateau is an ideal location for the double-sided panels.

“Direct solar radiation is high in the high altitude plateau where the air is thinner, while diffuse solar radiation is important due to the complex landscape and high cloud cover,” he said.

“Both sides of the solar panels will receive large amounts of radiation in these regions.”

The team compared their estimates with radiation data from around the world and found their AI model to be highly accurate, Shao said, adding that combining the input data with meteorological data from other countries could help the system be used for global solar radiation forecasts. can

Young added that the data could be applied to other fields, such as agriculture, because plants can perform photosynthesis more efficiently under diffuse light conditions.

The Ohio Farm Bureau filed a motion last week with the Ohio Energy Deployment Board to intervene “as a full party of record” regarding a proposed solar farm in Marion County.

County commissioners have filed a lawsuit to request a chance to participate in the process to approve or reject the Chestnut Solar project, according to documents available online at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio website.

Chestnut Solar filed a response Thursday to the parties that made the request, saying the company “neither objects to nor opposes participation in this proceeding.”

District residents are invited to a public hearing at the Tri-Rivers Career Center, 2222 Marion-Mount Gilead Road in Marion, on April 29 at 5 p.m.

More: Pleasant Township residents oppose proposed solar energy project

“We help members in every way in this matter”

In their motion to intervene, the farm bureau’s lawyers claim that the organization’s members “have a real and significant interest in this matter that is not represented by the existing parties.”

According to Leah Curtis, policy advisor for the Ohio Farm Bureau, the move doesn’t mean they’re giving up on the issue.

“We are helping members on all sides of this issue explain the process and how they can be involved regardless of their views,” Curtis said in a written response.

Land conservation, such as drainage repairs, restoration and noxious weed mitigation, are some of the organization’s biggest concerns, and they want to ensure they are both required and met by the energy management board if the project is approved.

Similarly, the commissioners noted in their proposal that “there is broad interest in the project to protect county roads, waterways and the environment so that no harm is done to the county.”

This map shows the area in Pleasant Township where the proposed Chestnut Solar LLC solar facility would be located if approved by the Ohio Energy Siting Council. The yellow line shows the outline of the property where the facility will be located. The blue and pink areas show where the solar panels will be located on the property.

The solar farm can produce 68 megawatts in 45 years

The project originated in 2016 when Charlotte, North Carolina-based National Renewable Energy Corporation began conceptual work for a proposed Chestnut Solar LLC solar farm in Marion County.

If completed, the solar facility would occupy 404 acres in east Pleasant Township and have the capacity to generate up to 68 megawatts of electricity.

According to the proposed site map, the facility would be bounded by Somerlot Hoffman Road to the north, Newmans Cardington Road to the south, Maple Grove Road to the west and US 23 to the east.

Plans call for the site to produce renewable energy for up to 45 years.

A public hearing is required on April 29 for the state to approve the Chestnut Solar project.

Residents who wish to speak about the issue must register after coming to court. Everyone who registers is given 5 minutes to speak.

The Board will also accept emails regarding this matter to [email protected] as long as the message includes the Chestnut Sun Box number, 22-0988-EL-BGN.

[email protected]

419-564-3508

This article originally appeared in the Marion Star: Commissioners, Farm Bureau want part of Marion OH solar farm decision

The dual-glazed Vertex S+ 505W module was launched in January and began mass production in February at the company’s factory in Changzhou, China. The module has a maximum output power of 505 W and an efficiency of 22.7%. The dual glass design of the module also increases scratch, crack and impact resistance and provides resistance to salt spray, acids, alkalis, high temperature and humidity.

In addition, the module has a degradation rate of 1% in the first year and 0.4% per year. It can also deliver 8.6% more power than p-type modules. In addition, Trina Solar said the module is compatible with other balance of system (BOS) components and mainstream inverters, optimizers and mounting systems on the market.

In addition to this module, Trina Solar has recently improved the power conversion efficiency of its TOPCon Vertex N series modules, with the Vertex N 720W+ modules now boasting 23.2% efficiency.

The University of Connecticut has a smaller carbon footprint than it did 20 years ago thanks to long-term investments and its own power plant. Now the University is looking for ways to further reduce this footprint.

The university’s campus in Storrs has added nearly a million square feet of buildings over the past two decades. However, thanks to efficiency measures adopted by the university over 18 years, peak power consumption fell from 45 MW in 2005 to just 27.4 MW during last year’s September heat wave.

But now, as the campus grows, the demand for electricity increases, and the University is looking for ways to meet its heating and energy needs in more sustainable ways. He has multiple offers from both Facilities Operations and a student competition hosted by the Eversource Energy Center.

UConn President Radenka Maric discusses the university’s pledge to be carbon neutral by 2030 at the Global Business Leadership in Sustainability Summit. “We have to concentrate because we don’t have another planet!” He told the audience. Brian Paganini ’03, vice president and managing director of Quantum Biopower, Connecticut’s food waste-to-energy facility, looks on at the panelist. (Nathan Oldham / UConn School of Business)

The institutions made two different proposals. First, cogeneration for electricity and steam heat on the Storrs campus will add two hydrogen-capacity turbines to UConn’s operations, bringing the total rating to 50 MW. Three existing turbines are being upgraded to handle up to 30% hydrogen. The original cogeneration plant was built in 2006 and is quite efficient — much more than power from the general grid — but expanding it would continue UConn’s dependence on natural gas and eventually mix with hydrogen. A second proposal for the facilities would add a grid connection through Eversource’s East-West line, which gets most of its electricity from the Killingly natural gas plant and a smaller portion from the Millstone nuclear plant.

Student offerings are less traditional. They were submitted by UConn’s Eversource Energy Center in response to a competition last fall for students to propose campus, state or regional sustainable energy projects. According to Eversource Energy Center Director Emmanuel Anagnostou, the competition will be an annual event.

A joint committee of UConn faculty and Eversource executives selected the winning project for parking lots covered by solar panels, proposed by graduate students Pranavi Rebala ’25 (CLAS) and Austin Gelinas ’25 (ENG).

After looking at several different options, Rebala, an economics major, and Gelinas, an engineering major, decided that parking lots covered with modular solar panels made the most sense for UConn. Solar panels will be placed on roofs over existing parking lots and paired with batteries to store power for times of high demand on campus. Net metering, which is when the utility gives the owner of the solar panels full credit for every kilowatt they produce (so if you produce as much power as you use, it goes to zero, and if you produce more than you use, you get paid for it), would lower the cost of the project. Placing the solar panels in parking lots as close as possible to the UConn substation means less electricity will be wasted in transmission.

An interior view of the University of Connecticut Co-generation plant showing one of the three high-pressure drums (UConn Photo).

Rebala and Gelinas were extremely specific in their analysis to provide accurate cost estimates.

“We chose a special solar module, special inverters. We modeled it over a 25-year period, changing the variables to see which tilt would be most efficient, which capital expenditures would be more efficient,” says Gelinas.

“There is cash flow with solar energy, we are seeing positive returns. Eventually, we will see profit from this,” says Rebala.

Sun umbrellas over the parking lots were also proposed by Kevin Howson ’16 (CLAS, SFA) ’24 MS, Julie Sandberg ’25 MS, and Jacob Tyler ’24 MS, all graduate students in the Masters of Energy and Environmental Management program. Their analysis showed that the most cost-effective way to reduce the University’s energy needs was to partner with a developer to build a large solar roof. The developer will finance the construction; The university will commit to purchasing the energy generated by the canopy over a period of time. The team suggested applying to Connecticut’s Non-Residential Renewable Energy Solutions program to allow the developer to claim some other benefits that would make the project more financially viable.

Increasing solar capacity will also help graduate students Kexin Song ’25 Ph.D., Haoyi Wang ’26 Ph.D. and was the focus of undergraduate Paul Zambrzycki’s ’24 (ENG) project. But instead of proposing specific solar installations, Song, Wang and Zambrzycki scaled back by looking at the current solar generation capacity of the nearby cities of Willimantic and West Hartford. They predicted how solar capacity could be intelligently increased to improve the continuity of energy supply in those areas without straining the grid.

“When you install a lot of solar panels in one area, they produce a lot of energy and raise the grid voltage very high,” says Wang. His research focuses on network topology. “We need to develop resilience,” he says.

The team looked at maps of existing solar panels in Connecticut and found them to be inaccurate and outdated. Song’s research uses remote sensing data to pick out interesting details from publicly available aerial images, which he thought could improve solar maps. So the team created a map of actual solar coverage and then projected future growth in solar production based on income, irradiance, and the ability of the grid to operate more efficiently in specific locations.

“Our project can create a tool to better connect suppliers and customers and maintain system sustainability while achieving more clean energy,” says Song. Their map can be updated regularly, and Eversource has expressed interest in maintaining it as a useful tool.

Efforts for greater energy efficiency at UConn include innovations such as the solar-powered STEAM Tree. (Photo by Sean Flynn/UConn)

Three more proposals were also finalists of the competition. Undergraduates Kevon Rattigan ’25 (CLAS), Malik Francis ’24 (ENG) and Malachi Denton ’24 (ENG) explored the options and found hydrogen fuel cells interesting. They proposed putting hydrogen fuel cells on the roofs of buildings like Pharmacy that need a lot of electricity for 24 hours. Fuel cells will provide baseload power, reducing the amount that buildings will require from a cogeneration unit.

“Fuel cells on top of buildings would reduce the footprint. We also discussed using fuel cell heat to heat buildings,” says Francis, similar to how a cogeneration natural gas plant now produces steam heat.

Another team, engineering students Dev Barochia ’25 (ENG), Hasan Nikkhah ’27 Ph.D. and Francesco Rouhana ’25 (ENG). Part of their proposal displayed the energy consumption of UConn buildings on a TV screen in the buildings’ lobbies and asked questions to find out if people were aware of the buildings’ environmental footprints. They surveyed students and staff at UConn to find out what people want and are willing to do to reduce UConn’s energy consumption.

The second part of their proposal would increase UConn’s energy production using local resources.

“We proposed an anaerobic digester that converts animal waste and sewage sludge into biogas and electricity,” says Rouhana. The team calculated that this way they could get an extra megawatt of energy into the UConn grid and produce fertilizer that could be sold as a byproduct. The survey results suggested that the UConn community would relish the opportunity to compete to reduce the energy consumption of its buildings.

The sixth team also proposed an anaerobic digester and inter-campus competition to reduce energy use. Teammates Anietie Williams, a chemistry doctoral candidate, and Faith Wariri, a computer science and engineering doctoral candidate, were amazed at the Eversource data showing UConn’s energy use month by month, because Connecticut’s climate, though very different, was similarly high — and most of the buildings it looked empty in the summer.

“Obviously there is some low-hanging fruit where energy use can be optimized,” says Wariri.

Both teams that investigated this suggested that the campus community could be mobilized to significantly reduce energy consumption.

UConn’s Eversource Energy Center plans to host student-led workshops this spring to discuss the grid, decarbonization and sustainability. Students who submitted sustainability proposals last year will be invited to share their experiences and advice with future teams. This year’s challenge will focus on clean energy challenges at the city and community level.

And the benefits of competition should extend further, starting with Wariri and Williams. Although their proposal was not funded, the team intends to return home to Nigeria. Large parts of the villages there are not connected to the wider electricity grid.

In Nigeria, “most agricultural residues and livestock wastes are either burned, causing pollution, or dumped, resulting in poorly managed landfills. “I think if it’s managed properly, we can get biomass as a major energy source and solve our energy problems,” says Williams.