Solar PV penetration scenarios for a university campus in KSA
Solar PV penetration scenarios for a university campus in KSA
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is committed to transition its fossil fuel-driven electricity generation to that from renewable energy technologies, such as solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has led it to announce an ambitious target of 40 GW of PV power capacity by 2030. The deployment of such a capacity needs to be augmented with analyses to overcome the challenges faced in terms of the technical capability of the country.
This work contributes to this goal by investigating the utilisation of solar photovoltaic PV systems to supply medium-size entities such as universities with clean power, displacing the current fossil fuel power supply. Currently, such considerations are not fully addressed in KSA. The study used the University of Jeddah campus electrical load profile, taking into account future power needs. The methodology encompassed modelling the installation of multi-MW PV systems for the university by considering weather conditions, actual university consumption, load segregation, and economics under different development scenarios informed by surveys with decision makers at the university.
The results showed that air conditioning loads alone were responsible for 79% of the campus electrical load and that a 4.5 MW PV system is able to supply half of the total campus annual electrical energy consumption of the year of 2019. The optimum scenario showed that utilising grid-connected PVs would decrease the total cost of electricity over the next two decades by 28 to 35 percent and would result in halving the current campus carbon emissions. The analysis concludes that the business-as-usual case is no longer the cheapest option for the campus.
PV penetration, Saudi Arabia vision 2030, solar photovoltaic
Alsulamy, Sager
a493454f-6a82-4990-943f-8ad11533f820
Bahaj, AbuBakr S.
a64074cc-2b6e-43df-adac-a8437e7f1b37
James, Patrick
da0be14a-aa63-46a7-8646-a37f9a02a71b
Alghamdi, Nasser
ce4255be-757f-4864-b1ef-c6b4783bdb02
1 May 2022
Alsulamy, Sager
a493454f-6a82-4990-943f-8ad11533f820
Bahaj, AbuBakr S.
a64074cc-2b6e-43df-adac-a8437e7f1b37
James, Patrick
da0be14a-aa63-46a7-8646-a37f9a02a71b
Alghamdi, Nasser
ce4255be-757f-4864-b1ef-c6b4783bdb02
Alsulamy, Sager, Bahaj, AbuBakr S., James, Patrick and Alghamdi, Nasser
(2022)
Solar PV penetration scenarios for a university campus in KSA.
Energies, 15 (9), [3150].
(doi:10.3390/en15093150).
Abstract
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is committed to transition its fossil fuel-driven electricity generation to that from renewable energy technologies, such as solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has led it to announce an ambitious target of 40 GW of PV power capacity by 2030. The deployment of such a capacity needs to be augmented with analyses to overcome the challenges faced in terms of the technical capability of the country.
This work contributes to this goal by investigating the utilisation of solar photovoltaic PV systems to supply medium-size entities such as universities with clean power, displacing the current fossil fuel power supply. Currently, such considerations are not fully addressed in KSA. The study used the University of Jeddah campus electrical load profile, taking into account future power needs. The methodology encompassed modelling the installation of multi-MW PV systems for the university by considering weather conditions, actual university consumption, load segregation, and economics under different development scenarios informed by surveys with decision makers at the university.
The results showed that air conditioning loads alone were responsible for 79% of the campus electrical load and that a 4.5 MW PV system is able to supply half of the total campus annual electrical energy consumption of the year of 2019. The optimum scenario showed that utilising grid-connected PVs would decrease the total cost of electricity over the next two decades by 28 to 35 percent and would result in halving the current campus carbon emissions. The analysis concludes that the business-as-usual case is no longer the cheapest option for the campus.
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energies-15-03150-v2
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Accepted/In Press date: 18 April 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 26 April 2022
Published date: 1 May 2022
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
This work is part of the activities of the Energy and Climate Change Division and the Sustainable Energy Research Group (www.energy.soton.ac.uk) (accessed on 10 February 2022), in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Southampton, UK. It is also part of the work of the King Salman bin Abdulaziz Chair for Energy Research within King Abdulaziz University, KSA. The research is also part of a PhD programme sponsored by the Faculty of Engineering, at the University of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Keywords:
PV penetration, Saudi Arabia vision 2030, solar photovoltaic
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 473589
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/473589
ISSN: 1996-1073
PURE UUID: a9697452-c79c-4778-81ad-3712d269f9ed
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Date deposited: 24 Jan 2023 17:37
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 02:39
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Author:
Sager Alsulamy
Author:
Nasser Alghamdi
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