Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Estimating Solar Energy Production In Urban Areas For Electric Vehicles, Shaimaa Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

Cities have a high potential for solar energy from PVs installed on buildings' rooftops. There is an increased demand for solar energy in cities to reduce the negative effect of climate change. The thesis investigates solar energy potential in urban areas. It tries to determine how to detect and identify available rooftop areas, how to calculate suitable ones after excluding the effects of the shade, and the estimated energy generated from PVs. Geographic Information Sciences (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) are used in solar city planning. The goal of this research is to assess available and suitable rooftops areas using …

Numerical Study Of Advanced Solar Receiver Tubes Based On A Coupled Thermo-Mechanical Analysis For Concentrated Solar Power Tower Plant, Shawn Michael Hatcher

Theses and Dissertations

The search for more sustainable energy to match the growing energy demand begins with finding more dispatchable resources such as solar energy. As one of the promising solar technologies, concentrated solar power (CSP) has a full capacity to store thermal energy for extended operation. Nevertheless, some key components in CSP systems usually face extreme environment, such as uneven solar flux, cyclic thermal expansion, structural degradation on the solar absorber tubes in a Concentrated Solar Power Tower (CSPT) Plant. In this study, we applied Multiphysics simulation to explore the benefits of introducing optimized fins for heat transfer enhancement and uniform temperature …

Enhancing Bifacial Pv Efficiency With The Addition Of A Rear Side Reflector, Neila Watson

Honors Theses

Bifacial photovoltaics are an expanding sector of solar electricity production, collecting solar energy on the front, back, and sides of the module. This increases the efficiency by around 10% to 30% over a typical mono facial cell, which only collects sunlight on the front. However, the performance of bifacial PV arrays depends on a variety of factors, including temperature, shadows, solar insolation, and set-up geometry. The geometry is affected by the tilt angle, the azimuth angle, the height from the ground to the panel, and the reflectance from the ground surface. The addition of a reflector, usually white in color …

Consumer-Ready Insulated Solar Electric Cooker, Simon Ford, Sachin Gokhale, Brendan Lynn, Richard Nguyen

Mechanical Engineering

An insulated solar electric cooker, or ISEC, converts solar energy into electricity to cook food, boil water, provide heat or even help charge batteries. In this project, the focus is an ISEC with a phase change material (PCM) that helps store heat when the solar energy input is minimal, such as after the sun has set. Although a successful ISEC already exists that utilizes PCM, this product can be improved in many ways. The specific revisions investigated in this report are the improvement of the thermal efficiency with the implementation of a vacuum-sealed outer pot, the reduction of the overall …

Power Output Modeling And Optimization For A Single Axis Tracking Solar Farm On Skewed Topography Causing Extensive Shading, Logan J. Smith

Master's Theses

Many utility-scale solar farms use horizontal single axis tracking to follow the sun throughout the day and produce more energy. Solar farms on skewed topography produce complex shading patterns that require precise modeling techniques to determine the energy output. To accomplish this, MATLAB was used in conjunction with NREL weather predictions to predict shading shapes and energy outputs. The MATLAB models effectively predicted the sun’s position in the sky, panel tilt angle throughout the day, irradiance, cell temperature, and shading size. The Cal Poly Gold Tree Solar Farm was used to validate these models for various lengths of time. First, …

Implementing A Data Acquisition System For The Training Of Cloud Coverage Neural Networks, Weston C. Montgomery

Master's Theses

Cal Poly is home to a solar farm designed to nominally generate 4.5 MW of electricity. The Gold Tree Solar Farm (GTSF) is currently the largest photovoltaic array in the California State University (CSU) system, and it was claimed to be able to produce approximately 11 GWh per year. These types of projections come from power generation models which have been developed to predict power production of these large solar fields. However, when it comes to near-term forecasting of power generation with variable sources such as wind and solar, there is definitely room for improvement.

The two primary factors that …

The Design Of A Solar Powered Air Conditioning System For An Albuquerque Office Building, Kuo S. Lee

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

The purpose of this investigation is to predict the performance of a solar powered jet refrigeration system for summer air conditioning, to measure the performance of the solar heat collector at the Bridgers and Paxton building in Albuquerque, and to design a Freon-12 ejector and generator for collection to that collector.