Abstract
The increasing energy consumption and the constant usage of fossil fuel led us to develop the renewable energy sources, which are eco-friendly and not harming the environment. Although Wind and Hydro sources are renewable sources, but they are area dependent sources. One of the rare sources of energies which is not area dependent is Solar energy, Solar panels can be installed in any place. At first one of the main issues with solar energy was land requirement, which is rarely available in the world and even expensive to get, but nowadays with new improvements, floating solar Photovoltaic (PV) panel can be installed in any water bodies which will not only eliminate the cost of the land but will increase the amount of generated power using the cooling effect of water.
We, Farid Ahmad Gailani, and Ahmad Monir Jan Sarwary will work as a team on designing a 10 MW Solar Farm and Battery Storage project. We will consider Lathrop city, San Joaquin County of California for this project. Availability of land close to consumers, accessibility to city power gird, proximity of roads and freeway, availability of water for cleaning and maintenance of solar panels and Federal and California State Tax credit incentives and support on renewable and clean source energies makes the mentioned location a great option to build solar farm. This project will include design and calculation of a 10 MW Solar farm and a 10 MW battery storage by implementing the latest smart inverter technology. Methodology of design for this project will include site assessment, shade analysis, tilt angle, energy calculation, solar PV panel sizing, battery storage sizing, smart power inverters, charge controllers, HVAC and controls system for battery storages, smart metering, cabling systems, step-up and step-down power transformers, and site panelboards. AutoCAD software will be used to draw singles, block diagram, and System Advisor Model (SAM) will be used to perform design and simulation of the solar farm. The main purpose of this project is to decrease air pollution and greenhouse gasses. From a technical point of view the purpose of this project is to cover peak hour loads and be a backup source for power grid during the power shortage and blackouts. To achieve project goals, the system will charge the energy storages from PV panels on sunny days or from city power grid on cloudy days and discharge them back to the grid on peak hours. Charging the battery storages will happen during off-peak hours or midnight (When the price is low) and discharging will happen on peak hours when the price is high.