Alternative Sources of Power in Built Environments

In view of increasing power generation, improving the stability of the power generated and also expanding the transmission capacity of the grid, It is pertinent to note that optimization plays an important role. Optimization meant here is in the form of integrating alternative methods of generating power to augment the conventional power generation methods. This would serve to lower the burden on the strained national grid and increase the electrification of areas not currently benefiting from the grid power. Renewable energy plays an important role in absorbing the pressure on the existing grid and serve as a sufficient and competent alternative thereby improving the standard of living and boosting the socio-economic development of the nation.

Using Nigeria as a case study, most of our energy usage comes from heating and cooling of the building (majorly residential and commercial buildings) as well as operating plant. Therefore, the focus will be on how to optimize energy efficiently in buildings using renewable energy.

RENEWABLE ENERGY OVERVIEW

A renewable resource is one which can be used repeatedly and replaced naturally without being depleted. These resources can be of various types which include:

1. Solar power: This is one of the most commonly used forms of renewable energy. The radiant light and heat from the sun are converted into electricity and other forms of energy solar conversion technologies — such as photovoltaic cells etc.

2. Wind power: The sun’s heat drives wind whose energy is harnessed using wind turbines which converts the wind’s kinetic energy to electrical energy.

3. Hydroelectric power: This is the most common source of renewable energy. This form of renewable energy relies on the gravitation potential of elevated water (lifted from the oceans by sunlight) stored in a reservoir. When this water flows, it passes through a turbine converts the energy into electrical energy.

4. Bioenergy: This type of energy relies on using organic matter that comes from plant or plant-like materials and animals to produce electrical energy to power electrical plant and alcohol to fuel automobiles.

5. Fuel cells: This is an electrochemical cell that converts chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen fuel with oxygen or another oxidizing agent.

6. Geothermal energy: The energy comes from the Earth’s internal heat is harnessed using heat pumps for variety of uses including heating of buildings

7. Ocean energy: This comes from a number of sources which could be tidal or wave. The tidal power is when the energy is driven by the tides while the wave power is driven by the winds. These forms of ocean energy are used to produce electricity.

Currently, in the built environment, the most utilized source of renewable energy is the solar power. So, the focus of this article will be on integrating solar power to the primary power supply from the local utility provider to the supply of buildings as to foster improved power situation in the country.

To start with, detailed electrical services design of the building to be optimized is needed. The detailed design includes lighting and power design. Though there are other services like the ELV (Extra Low Voltage) system which could include Fire alarm system, Sound system, Access control system etc.

In summary, the design of the electrical power distribution for a building project comprises of the following steps:

· A detailed concept design of the services: This involves producing a concept design for the space taking into account all the power requirements for all services including — lighting, mechanical plant, plumbing, fire alarm, lifts etc. The basis of this design is the brief provided by the client based on what the space is required for. The design is done by using appropriate building regulations and standards such as British Standards, BS7671 — IET Wiring regulation, CIBSE guide, IEC Standards, ASHRAE etc. Technical Simulation Software such as DIALux, XLPro 3 etc. are also used to aid the design process.

· Maximum Demand/ Load Calculation: Using the detailed concept design produced, a maximum demand calculation is generated to estimate the maximum power required run after careful design of the building, this is the next step. Here, the specification of the fittings used in the design and diversity factor comes into play. The software use in here is majorly Excel. Once the maximum required by the building based on the design is known, if need be, transformer or generator size can be deduced from it.

The maximum demand based on the above table is the addition of the total connected load per phase in KVA. The total current is calculated using the formula:

Before the increased awareness of Climate change, power supply in built environments were primarily provided by the local utility provided from ‘The Grid’. In Nigeria, with increased demand in the built environment for state of the art buildings with high electric power demand, It has been proven that the Grid does not have sufficient capacity to provide uninterrupted power for all these buildings and power is erratically supplied with certain areas having little to no power supply to operate their buildings. With this in view, introducing the solar power to augment the Grid power to operate the building services would play a major role increasing the capacity and stability of the power supply to buildings.

In buildings, the roof-mounted solar panel system is mostly used. The solar panel system consists of four (4) major components which are the solar panel, charge controller, batteries and DC/AC Converter.

The total estimated power that the solar panel can provide in buildings is dependent majorly on the useable surface area of the roof. Climate and peak sunlight of the location and the efficiency rating of the solar panels are other things that affect power generated by the panels. Also, the condition of the roofs in terms of weight and direction of roof slope affects the installation of the panels and as such affects the power output of the solar panel.

With the above mentioned taken into consideration, solar panels can be deployed either fully or partly (in conjunction with electrical power supply from the grid) in buildings to prevent overworking of the grid due to huge number of heating and cooling and at such a large part of the populace will be save the stress of coping with darkness due to unavailability of reliable power.

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