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INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................3 WIND ENERGY ...............................................................................................5 SPECIFICATIONS.................................................................................................5 WIND TURBINE ...................................................................................................5 INVERTER ..........................................................................................................6 EXPECTED ENERGY PRODUCTION .......................................................................7 POWER CURVE ..................................................................................................7 WIND DISTRIBUTION .........................................................................................11 ENERGY PREDICTION ........................................................................................13 SOLAR ENERGY ..........................................................................................14 SPECIFICATIONS...............................................................................................14 PV PANELS ......................................................................................................14 INVERTER ........................................................................................................15 EXPECTED ENERGY PRODUCTION ......................................................................16 THEORETICAL PREDICTION ................................................................................16 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS...................................................................................17 A COMPARISON: THE SUNFLOWER.................................................................21 ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING ................................................................22 DATA MONITORING AND DISPLAY ...........................................................23 CONCLUSION...............................................................................................25
Introduction
In todays world transportation is a major polluter and energy consumer. People have become used to regularly travelling long distances to work or just for pleasure and modern lifestyles are often arranged around the permanent availability of relatively cheap transport options. The current habits and technologies are not sustainable and solutions need to be found to minimise the environmental impact as much and as soon as possible. One of them is the electric car. The concept of electric vehicles has a very big potential for future applications - especially if charged on renewable electricity - as they can provide pollutionfree 1 transportation for the main part of the populations travel needs. The technologies of electric motors and batteries are already well established; they are now being adapted and developed further in order to produce higher energy efficiencies and larger effective capacities. Some people are worried about the limited range of electric cars, the required charging time or the maximum available speed. Advancement of technology will lessen the magnitude of these problems. At the same time a range of concepts are being suggested and introduced for an efficient and clean transport system based on electricity. This includes, for example, battery leasing (Th!inks Mobility Pack), charging stations with battery replacement facilities, vehicle to grid charging etc. The use of electric cars as a replacement for the currently used vehicles based on fossil fuel will only then imply a significant pollution reduction if the energy used to charge the new cars is produced from renewable sources. 2 As with every new technology, a big step in achieving a successful changeover from an old and well-established product is public awareness and genuine acceptance and interest in the new device. For demonstration and awareness raising purposes, a renewably powered electric charging station that incorporates both wind a PV technology, was set up at the Nordic Folkecenter. This charging station is an information point for all visitors an incentive for people to consider electric vehicles as a promising future transport option. The beauty of the installed charging station also lies within the simplicity of the underlying idea: The combination of two complementing renewable energy sources for energy production all year round. This concept can be applied to a wide range of applications of which Folkecenters charging station for electric cars is only one example. As is the case here, the system can be connected to an electricity grid (national or local). Alternatively, batteries could be used for energy storage, thereby creating a 100% autonomous power production facility. The scale can be as small or even smaller than demonstrated at the centre or be increased to much larger sizes. The dimensions and connection
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Not taking into account the pollution caused during the entire lifetimes of all components. Do Electrical Cars make sense in Denmark? written by Folkecenter trainee Melissa Valgardson. Published on the centres website.
type depend on the specific use - but energy collected from the sun and wind will complement one another in the wider context of every system. This report was written with the aim of giving an introduction to the individual components that make up Folkecenters charging station and their initial performance. It lists the specifications of the main parts and explains how performance monitoring and calculations were carried out. Where known the part numbers are given in square brackets. Additional information has been collected in a folder for easy access, so that any person wanting to work with the system wont have to spend time on researching instruction manuals. Most documents and files are also saved on the centres server (Trainees Completed Work\Integrated Systems\Charging Station). The prepared Mathcad files can be used for future data analysis in order to monitor the systems performance and verify the energy predictions made in this report.
Wind Energy
Specifications
Wind turbine LAKOTA (Aeromag Corporation) Rotor diameter: Swept area: Rated power output: Peak power output: 2.09 m 3.43 m2 900 W (at 12.9 ms-1) 1500W (at 17 ms-1)
The incoming signal from the turbine passes through a commander box where it is rectified before being sent to the inverter. The commander also ensures that the maximum inverter input voltage is not exceeded, by sending any incoming signal above a certain voltage to a dump load (two 1000W, 0.75 resistors connected in series [ASE1000.075]). This voltage limit is controlled by the load diversion regulator [LDR 48-30], which can be adjusted with a potentiometer. In the current configuration the potentiometer is set to approx 59V corresponding to the inverters properties. A brake is installed in the commander before signal rectification (careful, the OFF-positions refers to the brake being turned off, meaning that the turbine is turned on!). The turbine automatically tilts backwards for overspeed protection and should therefore be able to withstand quite high wind speeds without having to be stopped manually. The turbine was previously connected to a 24 V battery bank for which the diversion limit had to be significantly lower. As this is not within the normal range of the potentiometer the addition of two cables in the commander, as shown in the pictures below, was used to halve the voltage.
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Inverter Windy Boy WB 1100LV (SMA Technologie AG) Nominal output power: Maximum output power: Maximum input voltage: Maximum input current: Maximum efficiency: 1000 W 1150 W 60 V 62 A 92 %
Creating a stable electrical signal from the constantly varying power output of a small wind turbine is not an easy task, which is why there are not many suitable inverters on the market at the moment. It is much more common to connect small turbines to a battery bank for energy storage. This is the first time a small turbine has been connected to the grid at the Folkecenter. The Windy Boy installed in the charging station is the smallest in the wind turbine inverter range offered by SMA and so far (for its operating time of four months) it has worked very satisfactorily without any problems.
The above graph depicts the inverters efficiency over a range of output power. The data was recorded during a windy day (maximum one-minute average wind speed of 14.8 m/s) and covered almost the entire power range of the inverter. The overall efficiency for this day was 88.29 %.
Efficiency
Different settings were tested under different wind conditions and subsequently analysed with Mathcad (DataAnalysis1). The file is available for review and future use on Folkecentres server. It requires the input of two text files, one containing the wind speed data (one minute average) and another that contains the data collected from the turbine (recorded every 10 seconds). The Mathcad file sorts the averaged data into wind and voltage bins and then graphically displays the turbines resulting power curve, efficiency coefficient and characteristic curve. An output file is created in order to facilitate further analysis and comparison of the data. A different Mathcad file (DataComparison1) was created for comparison of the turbines performance under different conditions. It imports the experimental results from selected
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dates and then graphically displays the data. Some results from these two Mathcad files are presented on the following pages to show how the turbine reacted to different Characteristic Curve settings. The approach used to find the optimal setting was to match the curve to the actual output produced by the turbine. Determining the optimal setting was not as simple as it seemed at first because the wind conditions were obviously different for every set of data recorded. As it turned out in the end, the original setting had already been fairly adequate (red coloured data in graphs). The final setting is very similar to the slightly more efficient first correction made to the parameters (dark blue data set recorded on March 21st) but with a reduced grid feeding starting voltage U.DCWindStart of 21 V (as for the light blue data set). This reduction allows for power production at lower wind speeds. When looking at the raw data it becomes clear that the turbine could actually produce power at even lower wind speeds. But when the Characteristic Curve was adjusted for this property by lowering U.DCWindStart and U.PVStart, the load became too large at higher wind speeds causing the maximum power production to be strongly limited (green graph). Different settings were tested in order to counteract this effect but none of them were successful so they are not included in this report. Giving the curve a steeper gradient also had an overloading effect (pink data).
Power Curve
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The fatter black line in the two graphs displayed on this page represents the final Characteristic Curve setting.
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Final characteristic curve parameters: Parameter U.PVStart [V] U.DCWindStart [V] U.DCWindMid [V] U.DCWindMax [V] P.WindMid [W] P.WindMax [W] final value 20 21 43 57 250 1150
Unfortunately the data collected with the final setting does not cover a large enough wind speed range to produce a complete power curve. For the turbines annual energy contribution to the system, the dark blue set of data was used, which was collected with a very similar setting.
Wind Distribution There are two facilities for recording wind speed at the Folkecenter, one at the front of the main building and one in the Testfield. Both are at a height of approximately 10m. The data from the anemometer at the centre is monitored continuously and can be used to calculate the local wind tendencies and distribution over a chosen period of time. The most suitable set of data for determining the wind distribution over one entire year was recorded during 2007. Only 10 days in June and 10 days in December are missing and the entire set is composed of 10-minute average winds speeds. Ideally, the average time should be as low as one minute for a more precise distribution and better correspondence with the determined power curve. Analysis of the available data was carried out using Mathcad. One file compares the wind values at the centre and out in the Testfield (WindComparison1) and a second file is used to calculate the wind distribution (WindDistribution1). It turned out that the relationship between the two sites is fairly linear with the wind values out in the Testfield being only slightly higher, as can be seen in the top graph on the next page. The gradient of the linear fit is 1.011 and its intercept equals 0.265. Obviously, the actual difference for every individual value depends on factors such as the momentary wind direction, turbulence and speed but for an annual distribution the linear fit can be used as an average correction. The results are displayed in the graph second graph; they clearly show the significant effect such a small correction has on the annual distribution. For a more accurate distribution a continuous set of wind data should be recorded out in the testfield with one minute averaging over several years.
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Wind comparison
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A summary of the local wind distribution properties: Wind Speeds [m/s] Original data Corrected data (Testfield) Data Weibull fit Data Weibull fit Average 4.88 5.12 5.53 5.75 Most occurring 3.8 3.19 3.8 - 4.7 3.57 Median 3.8 - 4.7 4.57 3.8 - 4.7 5.13
Energy prediction Using the wind distribution based on the 2007 data and the previously determined power curve for the LAKOTA leads to an annual energy production between 1000 kWh and 1200 kWh per year. Pw = 1100 kWh/year Instead of multiplying the wind distribution value of every wind bin with the respective amount of power produced by the LAKOTA, a multiplication with the corresponding AC-power fed into the grid by the inverter, gives an indication of the Windy Boys overall efficiency. This can then be used to calculate how much wind-electricity is being fed into the grid by the charging station, on a yearly basis. Estimated overall inverter efficiency and AC energy production: WB = 86.5 % PwAC = 951.5 kWh/year Taking into account the DC production range, this final value should fall between 865 kWh/year and 1038 kWh/year. However, these values represent predictions based on sets of experimental data but should be confirmed after long-term monitoring of the stable system. The final version of the characteristic curve was set on May 30th 2008. This date should be used as a starting point for future data analysis the operational time and total energy production of the Windy Boy were reset to zero at 10 a.m.
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Solar Energy
Specifications
PV panels (SOLEL AS / GAIA Solar) The PV system attached to the charging station for electric vehicles is composed of 25 second-hand monocrystalline silicon solar panels ranging in capacity from 37 W to 41 W with the following known properties: Maximum power WP [W]: Open circuit voltageVoc [V]: Voltage at maximum power VP [V]: Short circuit current ISC [A]: Current at maximum power Ip [A]: Minimum number of panels: Area [m2]: 37 20.3 2.8 3 0.41 38 20.1 3.1 4 0.41 40 21.4 3 1 0.41 41 20.6 14.6 3.3 2.8 0.41
The 25 panels cover a total area of 10.25 m2. For 17 of these panels, however, the peak power output is not specified. For most of them the measured open circuit voltage at midday is so high that they are likely to be able to produce around 40 W, which sums up to a total system capacity of around 980 W. The system faces south and is mounted at an angle of 30. The panels are all connected in series. In theory, the efficiency of the entire array should be around 10%. However, the actual efficiency is expected to be a little lower due to the age of the cells. The only way to determine this is to compare the production with the momentary incoming solar radiation. This process is subject to fairly high errors, as it was difficult to determine the solar radiation at exactly the right angle with the available equipment. The experimental values listed in the table below result in an average efficiency of 6.28%. This value could be determined more accurately with the recording of more precise values over a longer period of time.
Inverter Input Date 06.03.08 Current [A] 1.21 1.4 1.3 21.04.08 1.4 Voltage [V] 400 410 410 420 Power [W] 484.00 574.00 533.00 588.00
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Inverter Sunny Boy SB 1500 (SMA Technologie AG) Nominal output power: Input voltage range: Maximum input current: Maximum efficiency: 1500 W 125 - 500 V (DC) 3-8A 96 %
The inverter operates in MPP mode (Maximum Power Point) in order to achieve maximum power production at all times. Some of the internal values can be adjusted by the user, e.g. the start-up and stopping voltages were set to the allowed minimum values, which equal 140 V and 100 V, respectively. As with the Windy Boy, the Sunny Boys efficiency depends on the momentary power production. However, overall the Sunny Boy is more efficient than Windy Boy, as can be seen in the graph below. This can be easily explained with the fact of a much more constant and stable input signal.
Efficiency
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The data displayed in the graph on the previous page was recorded on March 23rd, a sunny day on which a production-range from 0 W to 884 W was covered. The maximum efficiency reached on this day was 95.16% and the overall conversion efficiency equalled 93.90%.
Ps = 790.23 kWh/year
As shown in the previous section, the efficiency of the Sunny Boy inverter is above 90% on a long sunny day, which would imply losses of less than 10% before the produced energy is fed into the grid. However, the production on cloudy winter days will be a lot lower, which will dampen the overall efficiency.
http://www.retscreen.net/ang/home.php
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In order to make a reasonable prediction some values were recorded and analysed with Mathcad. Experimental results The following graphs and numbers give an indication of daily energy production and overall daily inverter efficiency for a selection of sunny and cloudier days. Date March 19th March 20th March 21st April 22nd April 23rd April 24th April 25th April 26th PV production (DC) [kWh/day] 4.69 1.16 1.26 6.91 6.84 5.23 1.39 2.18 Grid feeding (AC) [kWh/day] 4.4 0.98 1.05 6.49 6.42 4.88 1.11 1.89 Overall efficiency 93.74 % 84.07 % 83.28 % 93.96 % 93.90 % 93.26 % 79.95 % 86.97%
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The first graph displays visually how much energy is being lost in the inverter at any given point in time. Overall the graphs demonstrate the energy production on different days and the effect of clouds / shadows. The maximum production seems to lie around 900W. At this time of year the system starts up at around 6:15 to 6:45 a.m. and ceases to produce between 6.30 and 8:30 p.m., depending on the conditions. This corresponds to 12 - 14 operating hours per day. An interesting next step would be the comparison to data recorded during the winter months. A Matchcad file called YearlyProdcution was prepared, which calculates the average daily energy production for every month and uses these values to predict the annual energy yield and overall inverter efficiency. However, the measurements so far have only been made on sunny days in March and April and therefore dont take into account the reduced production during winter months. Calculations should be made once the system has been monitored for a period of at least one year. The existing data suggests in overall inverter efficiency of 91.43%. However, the daily efficiency can be as low as 83% on less productive days. Taking into account the winter months and more rainy seasons, the overall annual inverter efficiency is estimated at:
SB = 87%
This should be verified after the system has been monitored over a longer period of time. For now, applying this estimated value to the previously calculated annual energy production of the PV system, the amount of energy fed into the grid and available for charging our electric car from the station is predicted to equal:
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The total capacity of the system is higher than that of the PV array connected to the charging station and the cells have a higher theoretical efficiency of 12% (not confirmed experimentally). However, the sculpture faces south-east and is fixed at a much higher angle of around 80, which is less advantageous for a location in Denmark. The annual production depends strongly on the efficiency of the cells and as this is unknown no prediction will be made within this report. After 8 days a first check of the production was made. At 1 oclock in the afternoon on a sunny spring day the system was producing 789.05 W (234 V * 3.372 A) and feeding 757 W into the grid. This corresponds to a high inverter efficiency of 95.9 %, as expected in this power range. During the total 127 operational hours of the Sunny Boy, it had already contributed 40 kWh to the electricity grid. This means that the inverter had been running approx 15 hours per day with an average power production of 315W. Based on these values the system would feed 1725 kWh of energy into the grid per year. However, as with the system installed on the charging station, these average values will definitely go down during the less sunny seasons of the year and therefore bring down the total annual energy production.
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kWh/year
The table below shows how many kilometres this corresponds to for a selection of currently available electric cars:
The Th!nk represents a reasonable average value for a useful city car. The calculated annual range corresponds to a daily distance of 27.2 km per day. This may not cover regular long distance drives but is more than sufficient for carrying out necessary tasks (e.g. shopping, driving to work etc.).
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and total energy production of the system but also the saved CO2 emissions and graphical displays of the turbines and solar arrays daily or monthly power output. At the time of writing this report the new monitoring system had only just been installed. It was working correctly but some time should be invested in figuring out the best settings of the new data analysis and display programme. The location of all recorded data is the local folder C:/Programmer/SMA/Sunny Data Control/Plants/Chargin station for EVs/. Data is recorded once a minute and represents a one-minute average value. This should be more accurate than the previously applied method (momentary data recording every ten seconds) but means that all prepared Mathcad files need to be adapted slightly before they can be used for analysis. According to the manual, Sunny Data Control allows for access and graphical data display using Excel from within the program (macros need to be enabled!). This will be very useful for visitor information display but could not be tested before the completion of this report. If the installation of the monitoring system is successful a future project could be the addition of further useful components. It would make sense, for example, to permanently install a weather station in the charging station in order to record the wind speed and maybe even the solar radiation. This data is essential for the complete analysis of the wind turbine and PV arrays performance. It is needed in order to calculate the LAKOTAs power curve to a much more accurate level than achieved in this report and also, in order to determine the PV panels actual efficiency. Additionally, the wind data could be used over a longer period of time to precisely establish the local wind distribution. Another project suggestion is the addition of Folkecenters other SMA inverters to the monitoring system.
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Conclusion
All the small experiments carried out for this report aimed at optimising the system and confirming the newly acquired Windy Boys stable performance. Repeated data analysis had the result that I gained a thorough understanding of the systems properties. I hope that with this report I have managed to pass some of this knowledge on to the reader. The poster displayed on the charging stations container contains a set of numbers to give Folkecenters visitors an idea of the amount of energy that can be produced with such a renewably powered system and how many kilometres this translates into on a yearly basis. The report explains where these numbers came from - it will be interesting to see how accurate these predictions actually are in one years time.
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