10th International Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering

20-22 December, 2018, Dhaka, Bangladesh 437

Solar Photovoltaic System Design for a Residential

Hall in BUET
Khadiza Umme Tahera1, Raisa Fabiha2 and Md. Ziaur Rahman Khan3
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
Dhaka, Bangladesh
ummetahera.158@gmail.com1, raisa.fabiha10@gmail.com2

Abstract—A grid connected solar photovoltaic system

has been designed for a residential hall in BUET. Survey
results have been used to calculate the load and available
rooftop area has been calculated to optimize the system
size. An economic analysis is also presented to calculate the
payback time and to check the viability of the project. The
system can be used to reduce the dependence on grid
power. A project like this can also act as a guideline for
possible rooftop solar systems in other residential hall in
different institutions.

Index Terms—solar photovoltaic system, load estimation,

economic analysis.

I. INTRODUCTION
Energy generation is closely related to the development of
Fig. 1: Rooftop view from Google Map
a country. Bangladesh is a densely populated country where
only 83% of the population has access to electricity [1]. With
Solar radiation data is taken from the website of NASA for the
the growth of the economy, the electricity demand is rising
site location. The additional energy generated would be
continually. To meet this demand, use of fossil fuels such as
supplied to the BUET grid.
gas, oil and coal has been increased. Thus the reserve of these
fossil fuels has fallen to an alarming level with rising price.
Besides, emission of CO2 and other pollutants has also become II. METHODOLOGY
a major concern. It has been found in a study that power sector
For our paper, Chattri Hall, BUET has been chosen as site
alone contributes to 40% of total CO2 emission of Bangladesh
for solar photovoltaic system design. This is a four storied
[2]. For all these reasons, renewable energy (solar, hydro, wind
building which accommodates around 500 female students of
energy) has become popular now-a-days for generating
BUET. The energy consumption of this residential hall is high.
electricity. Projects and researches have been done on stand-
It has a large unused shade-free roof area. So there is a
alone or off-grid [3-6] and grid-connected or on-grid [7-9]
promising opportunity of generating power on the roof of the
solar photovoltaic system design. The Government of
hall from solar PV systems. As it is a grid tie system, no battery
Bangladesh has a plan to generate 3168 MW power from
sizing and charge controller is needed. A survey has been
renewable energy sources by 2021 and about 1000 MW solar
carried out for load estimation. Following are the steps for
power can easily come from the rooftops of the buildings in
designing a solar PV system:
Dhaka city [10].
Being one of the most populated countries of the world
A. Load estimation
Bangladesh has enormous scarcity of land. Most of the
A survey has been conducted in the hall to accurately
available lands are very fertile and suitable for agriculture. So
estimate the load. At first, the number of different appliances
the government has taken initiatives to encourage rooftop solar
has been counted in students’ rooms, washrooms, common
system here. Such system has immense potential in
room, prayer room, reading room, office rooms, library, gym,
Bangladesh and Infrastructure Development Company
canteen, staircases and veranda, guard room, porch and street.
Limited (IDCOL) has already started providing loans in such
Then load factors have been estimated by assuming their usage
project with an interest rate of 6%.
at different periods of time around a whole day. After that, the
In this work, rooftop is considered as installation site for
total energy requirement of day, night and daily load has been
solar panel. As a large number of students stay in a residential
calculated for each appliance of individual room from their
hall, there is a huge amount energy demand. Moreover, in most
power ratings. Summing all these, the energy requirement of
of the residential halls, the rooftops remain unused. So, there
day, night and total daily load has been obtained for Chattri
is a huge potential to set up solar PV system on the rooftop of
Hall. Same calculations have been repeated for winter
the residential hall. Grid connected or on-grid solar PV system
considering seasonal load variation. These load calculations
has been chosen for design because feeding solar PV
are shown in Table I.
electricity to the grid is cost-effective in the long run.

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• Total average daily load = 508 kWh
• Total average day-time load = 198 kWh
• Total average night-time load = 310 kWh
To get the daily and monthly load patterns, the hourly load
factor of each appliance has been repeated. Then total hourly
load factors have been calculated by summing all load factors
at that hour. Monthly load has been calculated simply by
multiplying the total daily load by the number of days in that
month. Seasonal load variation has also been taken into
account in this calculation.
B. Selection of components required
The proposed solar system will be grid tied. So, there is no
requirement of battery backup and charge controller. Actually,
grid connected solar system without battery back-up requires
very few components.
1) Solar panel: In this work, Trina Solar Panel of 250 Wp
has been chosen for design [11]. Its place of origin is
Guangdong, China (Mainland). It has 25 years of warranty
and life span of more than that. It costs US $0.3/Watt. It is
made from polycrystalline-silicon material. It has an
efficiency of 15.3% and positive (0%/+3%) power tolerance.
2) Inverter: Inverter is a power conditioning unit which is
required to convert the generated DC power into usable AC
power for AC loads. For inverter sizing, capacity or rating of
inverter ≥ total connected AC wattage. But to get better
efficiency, inverter rating is chosen slight lower than the total
connected AC wattage. For our on- grid solar system, SMA
Sunny Tri Power 15000TL-US-10 Inverter has been chosen.
(Part No: 2950157). With peak efficiency above 98 percent
and a DC input voltage range of up to 1000 volts, this three-
phase and transformer-less PV inverter has everything needed
to ensure high efficiency. Integrated arc fault detection is
included for safety and code-compliance. Being equipped
with two independent MPP trackers it offers enormous
flexibility in the design of a PV system.

TABLE I
DAILY LOAD PROFILE OF CHATTRI HALL

Places Appliances No. of Appliances Rating (W) Daily Load (kWh)

Street Light 14 35 5.88
Guest Room Ceiling Fan 4 60 4.32
Light 3 20 0.42
Porch Ceiling Fan 1 60 1.08
Light 6 20 1.56
Entry Ceiling Fan 2 60 2.16
Light 4 20 1.04
Office Rooms Ceiling Fan 5 60 2.4
Light 10 20 1.6
Library Ceiling Fan 2 60 0.48
Light 2 20 0.16
Reading Room Ceiling Fan 2 60 1.692
Light 9 20 2.466
Gym Ceiling Fan 2 60 0.36
Light 2 20 0.12
Canteen Ceiling Fan 8 60 5.28
Light 14 20 1.68
Oven 2 1200 8.40
Fridge 4 35 1.68
Washroom Exhaust Fan 8 6 1.15
Light 64 20 19.84
Laundry Washing Machine 5 700 12.25
Common Room Ceiling Fan 19 60 16.07
Light 27 20 7.40
Prayer Room Ceiling Fan 1 60 0.66
Light 1 20 0.22
Students' Rooms Pedestal Fan (Ground and 1st floor) 264 45 200.77
Table Fan (2nd and 3rd floor) 272 20 91.94
Light 268 20 71.29
Staircases & Veranda Light 175 20 42.00
Field Light 7 20 1.68

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C. Overall system efficiency
PV panel efficiency, ηPV = 15.3%
For losses in distribution cables, efficiency, ηc = 98%
Inverter efficiency, ηinv ≈ 98.4%
Total system efficiency, η = ηPV * ηc* ηinv
= 0.153 * 0.98 * 0.984
= 14.75%
D. Measuring available rooftop area
BUET Chattri Hall has two wings as shown in Fig. 1. The
rooftop area of the hall is around 800 sq. m. As in general, from
an area of 10 m2, 1 kW solar energy can be generated.
Considering shedding effect, we assume that, the watt-peak
would be 78 kW.
E. Solar electricity generation estimate from solar irradiance
1) Geographical coordinates: To estimate the generation
of solar photovoltaic energy, solar irradiance data is required
which depends on geographical coordinates. The geographical
(latitude and longitude) coordinates of BUET Chattri Hall are:
Latitude: 23°43'27.71" or, 23.755134854737694
Longitude: 90°23'27.02" or, 90.37953689417859
A solar panel gives maximum output for electricity generation
when the incident ray is perpendicular to the panel. This
happens when a solar panel is kept at a tilt angle equal to its
latitude [13]. Table II shows monthly average radiation incident
at tilt angle equal to latitude (23°). Solar irradiance data is
obtained for tilted solar panels from the website of NASA [14].
From Table II, it is seen that average peak sunshine hours at 23°
tilt is 4.94 hours.
2) Inverter sizing: For this system watt peak of the PV array
is 78 kW. DC-to-AC ratio of an inverter is chosen greater than
1 for greater energy production when production is below the
inverter’s rating, which typically is for most of the day. But at
the same time it also causes "inverter clipping" [15]. When DC
TABLE II
MONTHLY AVERAGED RADIATION INCIDENT ON AN EQUATOR-POINTED TILTED SURFACE (kWh/m2/day) [13]
maximum power point (MPP) of the solar array exceeds
inverter's power rating, the extra power generated by the array
is clipped which causes lost energy production and leads to a
system that underperforms. That's why this ratio is kept 1.2 to
1.4 to allow both high electricity generation and considerable
amount of clipping. For this proposed design, the inverter has
been selected with DC-to-AC ratio of 1.3. So, four inverters
each of 15 kW (total 60 kW) have been used in this design.
3) PV array sizing:
• Average peak sunshine hours (23° tilt) = 4.94 hours
• PV panel rating = 250 Wp
• Unit PV panel area = 1.63 sq. m
• Efficiency = 14.75%
• Peak wattage of the solar PV array = 78 kWp
• No. of panels = 78000/250 = 312
• Total AC wattage of the inverters = 60 kW
4) String of solar panels: The inverter can take input of
maximum 1000 V DC. The open circuit voltage of PV panel is
37.8 V. So, number of panel that can be connected in series is
(1000/37.8) = 26. As the total number of PV panel is 312, so,
three strings of each having 26 solar panels connected in series
will be then connected in parallel and fed into each inverter.
Thus there will be 12 strings of solar panels.
5) Estimate of electricity generation: From these data,
daily and monthly solar electricity generation have been
calculated, as given in Table III. From Table III, it can be seen
that the minimum daily electricity generation is 236.4 kWh in
the month of July (due to rainy season and cloudy sky) and the
maximum daily electricity generation is 357.6 kWh in the
month of March. The average daily electricity generation is
296.57 kWh. Total annual electricity generation is 108115.2
kWh and total annual day time load demand is 88975 kWh. The
day time load and daily solar energy generation are plotted
together in Fig 2.

Lat 23.755 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual
Lon 90.379 Average
Tilt 23° 5.40 5.78 5.96 5.60 4.94 4.18 3.94 4.06 4.04 4.79 5.22 5.39 4.94

TABLE III
CALCULATION OF DAILY AND MONTHLY SOLAR ELECTRICITY GENERATION

Electricity Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Generation
Daily
Electricity
324 346.8 357.6 336 296.4 250.8 236.4 243.6 242.4 287.4 313.2 323.4
Generation
(kWh)
Daily Day
Load 186 186 198 198 198 198 198 198 198 198 186 186
(kWh)
Monthly
Electricity
10044 9710.4 11085.6 10080 9188.4 7524 7328.4 7551.6 7272 8909.4 9396 10025.4
Generation
(kWh)
Monthly
Day Load 7099 6412 7781 7530 7781 7530 7781 7781 7530 7781 6870 7099
(kWh)
Monthly
Load 19800.01 17883.9 19800.01 19161.3 19800.01 19161.3 19800.01 19800.01 19161.3 19800.01 19161.3 19800.01
(kWh)

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From Fig. 2, it can be seen also that the electricity generation is
less from the month of June to September. For these 4 months,
the generation is close to demand and for other months, the
generation is quite higher than the demand. Therefore, it could
supply full day time load demand of the hall residents
throughout the whole year and supply the additional amount of
electricity to the BUET grid.
LNG as fuel for power generation in near future which will
raise the tariff rate more. So, we have estimated the return time
of the installation cost assuming that this tariff rate will increase
by 5% each year (Table V). From Table V, we can see that the
return time for the installation cost will be about 3 years. This
economic analysis indicates that the proposed design would be
viable as a project also.

IV. CONCLUSIONS
Daily Load and Generation Solar power systems derive clean, pure energy from the sun.
Installing solar panels helps combat greenhouse gas emissions
Pattern and reduces our collective dependency on fossil fuel. In this
400 paper, on-grid solar photovoltaic rooftop system has been
300 designed for a residential hall, Chattri Hall, BUET. The
proposed design can supply full day time load demand of the
200
hall resident and supply the additional amount of electricity to
100 BUET grid for utilization in the neighboring residential areas
0 of BUET. The Government of Bangladesh is trying to promote
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec rooftop solar energy projects in government office and
educational institutions. This project can be a great inspiration
Daily Load (W) Daily Electricity Generation (W) for other institutions to implement rooftop solar energy system.

Fig. 2: Daily load and daily electricity generation pattern REFERENCES

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