The Study of Electrical Energy Utilization from Three Renewable Energy Resources in the Public Area of a Condominium

Abstract

The Royal Thai Government Policy emphasizes renewable energy utilization in the high potential areas such as Pathum Thani Province in the center part of Thailand. This study presents the use of renewable energy such as solar, water and wind energy on the rooftop of a high-rise building situated in Pathum Thani Province. The building characteristics show the annual average wind speed of 3.97 m/s, the annual rainwater stored on the rooftop is 354 m[superscript3]/y, and the annual average solar energy is 5.37 kWh/m [superscript2]. The study of hydropower energy from a waterfall was reconsidered and applied to be used in this study using rainwater flowing from the rooftop to drive a Pico Turgo Turbine. The rooftop was restructured to store 57.6 m [superscript3] of rainwater flowing down through a pipe of 21 m head to drive the 1 kW Pico Turgo Turbine. The turbine was equipped with four 10 mm diameter nozzles at 17° angle of attack, a 430mm runner diameter, and 21 buckets with a total capacity of 0.007 m [superscript3]. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is the simulation technique that showed the water turbine electricity output 1,037W, the experimental result 950W, and the theoretical calculation 1,310W. The CFD simulation showed the efficiency 79.21%, whereas the experimental result 72.51%. The CFD technique was also used to determine the suitable wind turbine location on the building rooftop. This indicated an appropriate installation point where a small building and surrounding terrain could increase the magnitude and velocity vector affecting the turbine characteristics. The HOMER software was used to simulate the Hybrid Renewable Energy System between wind and solar electrical energy outputs and evaluated with the experimental on-site data recorded. The HOMER simulation indicated power production 47% being generated from PV solar system, about 8% from the wind turbine, and 45% fed in from the local grid. The renewable fraction of this system was approximately 0.524. The experimental data showed 42.38% of the annual power production which was derived from PV system and 5.87% from the wind turbine system, indicating the potential to reduce annual dependence on grid electricity by 51.75%. This study explains the data of electrical energy produced from different renewable energy systems installed in the building. The results showed that the electrical energy output costs produced from the Hybrid Renewable Energy System were proved unsatisfied compared to the single renewable energy system. The CFD data of the Horizontal Wind Turbine Machine installed on the rooftop illustrate huge and various problems from its turbine characteristics as well as the building characteristics, while the Pico Turgo Water Turbine machine was proved unsuitable to be used in high rise buildings because of its installation cost and unstable rainwater supply.