Research Approach

To achieve the aim of the research, a comprehensive and analytical quantitative approach with a literature review was conducted throughout the course of this study. There are several reasons of carrying out literature review before executing the project. In this study, the literature review was conducted to achieve an extensive understanding of this research area. This is because there might have been a relapse in the awareness about the project researched at hand, which a new research study might be able to improve and propagate more research outcomes to provide more opportunities for continuous work in the research area. In this study, the information, knowledge and understanding considered were examined from various sources, which includes but not necessarily limited to academic journals articles, reports, university library and databases.

However, due to language limitation English and Finnish academic materials were examined in this study. All this helps to give profound insight in accomplishing the aim of the research and to know the relevance of the solar energy use in fur farms.

In this study, the design is based on the simulation tool (Homer) and the output results are integrated using a Microsoft Excel tool. The following subsection in this chapter discusses explicitly other research approaches adopted and good reasons for considering them.

2.1.1. Description of Study Area

The fur farms are located in Jylhäntie and Kettutarhantie in Kaustinen, Finland. Kaustinen is located in Western Finland in the region of Central Osthrobonia. The municipality of Kaustinen has a total population of 4,302 with a population density of 12.15 person per square kilometer and a total land area of 361.12 square kilometer. Also, about 7.09 square kilometer of the total area is covered with water. The study area domain covers a coordinate of 63^o 33´N 023^o 41.5´E.

It is important to know the sun energy potential of the project location before embarking on the installation of solar PV. Apart from the literature review, there was also visit to Kaustinen to have more knowledge about the area of study. It was found out the study area has a good solar production potential, which is one of the motivated source of the investment since Finland is

progressing in implementing renewable energy solutions for the future. Figure 1 illustrates the municipality of Finland and the red highlighted portion of the graph is the study area.

Figure 1. Kaustinen study area in Western Finland [13].

2.1.2. Solar Power Plant Area

Solar panels are technology devices that capture solar radiation and converts it directly into electricity. The area where the proposed solar power plant is expected to be built at fur farms and food factory needs to be verified so as to know the roof direction suitability for solar PV, roof types and the type of solar PV feasible for the project. There are four fur farms and one food factory to be analyzed in this study and the solar panels will be installed on a gable type of roofs. Also, all the panels will be a fixed systems and they will be facing two different directions.

Categorically, the panels will be facing the southeast and the southwest directions, as these are the two possible directions to build the solar plant in this research location. Figure 2 shows the highlighted rooftops of fur farms and the food factory where the solar power plant will be simulated. To the left, Figure 2(a) shows the highlighted roofs of a fur farm and food factory facing the southwest direction; and to the right Figure 2(b) shows the roofs of three fur farms facing the southeast direction.

Furthermore, there four different types of solar panels, which can be used for this type of study;

the crystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon and thin film crystalline

silicon. However, in this study the polycrystalline system will be used, since it is the cheapest in the market. Although, it has low heat tolerance, which affects its performance when temperature is high and also a low efficiency compared to the other types. More knowledge on solar panel types and characteristics can explored in [14].

(a) (b)

Figure 2. The proposed solar plant area at Kaustinen. (a) Southwest direction. (b) Southeast direction.

2.1.3. Rooftop Solar PV Use

The use of rooftops for solar energy production plays an important role in renewable and sustainable energy use [15]. It has a high prospects of reducing land use for solar installation and also reduces the additional cost of transmission. Although, the use of rooftops for solar energy production could be challenging in some project locations due to bird poops, snow and ices effects, which could be causing shading effects and this may lead to an inefficient output of the panels, more knowledge can be explore in [16]. However, all these effects can be avoided by cleaning the panels to enhance a good production output of the panel. Table 1 presents the diverse benefits of using rooftops for solar energy production.

Table 1. Benefits of rooftops for solar PV production [17].

Construction

Site access Photovoltaic (PV) systems are at the point of consumption, thus do not require additional investment for access during construction or for operation and maintenance.

Modularity They can be designed for easy expansion if power demand increases Operation and Maintenance

Primary energy supply Solar energy is freely available, and the PV system does not entail environmental costs for conversion to electricity.

Maintenance PV rooftop systems require minimal inspection and maintenance for example safety of the system needs to be checked.

Peak generation These systems offset the need for grid electricity generation to meet expensive peak demand during the day.

Mature technology PV systems nowadays are based on proven technology that has operated for over 25 years.

Impact

Investments Rooftop PV system costs help offset part of the investment needed for new power generation, transmission, and distribution in the power grid.

Cost Fuel savings from PV systems typically offset their relatively high initial cost.

Environment PV systems create no pollution or waste products while operating, and production impacts are far outweighed by environmental benefits.

2.1.4. Rooftop Analysis

The evaluation of the rooftops is carried out to know the area of the rooftops suitable for solar energy production and to know the capacity potential of each rooftops facing both directions. In order to achieve an accurate measurement, “Sun energia” solar test application is used to measure the rooftops and to know the possible areas with good solar energy outputs [18].

However, in this study, only the total area values of the roof measured by “Sun energia” will be considered but the estimated area values suitable for solar use according to the “Sun energia”

will not be considered. The suitable area for solar PV production in this study is estimated using (1) below, where Aroof represents the total roof area obtained from “Sun energia”, and it is divided by two to get the suitable solar roof area (Proof) for the research project location.

𝑃_roof =𝐴_roof

2 (1)

2.1.5. System Characteristics

The solar photovoltaic system of 250 Wp is simulated to estimate the number of panels that can contain the solar PV potential rooftop and to determine the maximum capacity potential for the fur farms and food factory in Kaustinen. The number of panels Npanels which the rooftops can contain and the maximum system capacity Mcapacity is estimated using (2) and (3) below, where Parea and Poutput represents the solar panel area and solar panel power output respectively.

𝑁_panels = 𝑃_roof (𝑚²)

𝑃_area (𝑚²) (2)

𝑀_capacity = 𝑁_panels× 𝑃_output (3)

The estimated maximum capacity is further used in dimensioning the exact solar system size for each farm case based on the selected criteria. The module efficiency ranges from 15% to 18%

but for this study an efficiency of 15.74% is used to carry out this analysis. The panel efficiency used in this study was objectively chosen, because efficiency is one of the determining factors for panel output [19]. Table 2 shows the characteristics of a 250 Wp system used in this study.

Table 2. Characteristics of solar system size [20].

Characteristics Units Values

Maximum power Pm (W) 250

Maximum power voltage Vm (V) 30.4

Maximum power current Im (A) 8.26

Module efficiency % 15.74

Operating temperature range ^oC −40^o C ~ +85^oC

Dimension (L*W*H) mm 1620*980*40

Weight Kg 18

2.1.6. Simulation Software

A large number of technology, seasonal variations, economical cost and different periods of the availability of various renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass and hydro-power

are the main reason for simulating the performance of the renewable energy systems. These factors accounts to the difficulties in making a decision on the energy system and the size of each components needed to be operated with the renewable system for successful outcome of the design. There are large number of simulation tools that could be used for modeling the different renewable energy system configuration such as Homer, RETScreen, and Pvsyst for an efficient output of the technology. However, amongst the mentioned simulation software the Homer software is the software chosen in this study to simulate the outputs of the renewable energy systems. For the purpose of this study Homer is used for simulating only one renewable energy system which is the solar photovoltaic and a Microsoft Excel calculation tool is used to integrate the simulation output result. Homer is a micro-power optimization model for designing an analyzing hybrid power system. It consists of wind turbine, solar photovoltaic, conventional generators, batteries and other equipment. It is used for evaluating designs that are off-grid or grid connected power systems, more information on Homer can exploited from [21].

In this study, the solar PV system was simulated with a system size of 1 kWp on hourly basis and incorporated with the hourly electricity consumption of the fur farms and food factory. The incident solar radiation data used for the estimation of the solar PV was provided by the Homer software which gather the data from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The solar irradiation and weather condition used for this simulation were gathered from the city of Kaustinen, which is situated in the western part of Finland. However, the simulation result for the production output of solar PV for the month of January, February and December were assumed to be zero due to snow and lack of sunlight availability. In addition, different slope angle can be used for this simulation but in this study a single slope of 35^owas simulated all through the course of the simulation and the azimuth angle used is dependent on the direction of the roofs. For the southeast direction an azimuth of −45^o is used while 45^o is used for the southwest direction. Although a lifetime cost is not calculated in this study but a lifetime of 30 years is assumed for solar PV in this simulation.

2.1.7. Data Collection

The data used in this study are collected in two different parts. The first parts of data is the hourly electricity consumption, and it was collected from the fur farms and the food factory considered in this study to know the present situation of the electricity use for operation. The

second part of the data was derived from measuring of the rooftops potential suitable for the use of solar photovoltaic, and this is conducted to know the estimated amount of solar photovoltaic that could be installed on the roofs and to know the direction at which the rooftops are facing for an optimal production output of the solar PV.