Design and modeling of a PV system for a house in Saudi Arabia

Alharbi, Saif (2017) Design and modeling of a PV system for a house in Saudi Arabia. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

Consumption of electricity in the Middle East is quite high due to the high cooling demands during summer time in each home. However, Saudi Arabia has high solar energy resources that could be used to meet all home energy needs. In this Thesis, a solar energy system is designed using BEopt and Homer software. BEopt was used to build a thermal model for an actual house in Qassim, Saudi Arabia to stimulate the hourly kilowatt electrical consumption for mainly cooling purposes. Mathematical equations have been used to calculate the necessary photovoltaic and Battery size. The collection of data and BEopt results are used by Homer software to design various options for a PV system. Results indicate that an 18.85 kW PV system, 52 batteries 200 Ahr each and a 10kw inverter can meet all house energy needs. This study presents a dynamic modeling of a photovoltaic (PV) system for a residential application using Simulink. The PV system designed here consists of 56, 325W, 24 V PV modules, 52, 200Ahr, 12V batteries, a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) charge controller and a 10 kW inverter to power a house. This Thesis proposes a boost converter; (MPPT) to be applied to the system to obtain a maximum output power of the PV system. Additionally, varying weather curves data were implemented in the design to simulate potential conditions, namely solar radiation and temperature. A step-up transformer is used to achieve the house required voltage. The simulation results prove that such a PV system would work smoothly without grid connection at a location such as Qassim, Saudi Arabia. The research aims to design the installation process of a PV system of a typical Saudi house. HelioScope Software is a fundamental tool to evaluate the PV system installation. Moreover, many installation factors have been investigated such as; wiring material, cables specs, shadow effect and protection devices.

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