Thesis Project: Electrical Power Supply System for a Settlement “Greensburg” Using Renewable Energy Sources (RES)
Developer: Vadim Zhang
Date of Initiation: January 5, 2015
Date of Completion: June 6, 2015
Contact: vadimzhz@gmail.com, 126 Baitursynov Street, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Short Summary
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Scope
3. Short Overview
4. Budget/Business Plan
5. Conclusion
1. Introduction
The “Electrical Power Supply System for a Settlement “Greensburg” Using Renewable Energy Sources” thesis project was designed by the author during his final year of studying on a Bachelor Electrical Engineering program in Almaty. This short summary includes only the main core of the 188-page thesis.
The Project objective was to design a technically and financially feasible project of supplying a settlement called Greensburg with electrical energy using only renewable energy sources. The Project conditions were:
The town should be located within a distance of 200 kilometers (3 hours driving) from Almaty, so it is placed near the country’s most populated city.
It should be near popular tourist locations such as Mountain Lakes, Rivers, Ridges, and Canyons, so it naturally attracts tourists and new dwellers to rent/buy houses.
It needs to be located close to a national road that connects different countries, so more people who travel abroad can visit the town.
It has to be located where wind and solar resources have potential to be utilized, so it has a source of power.
The town can be located in a remote place where no power grid is available, so the whole electrical system can be autonomous.
The town needs to accommodate about 750-1000 people and have its own basic facilities to provide high levels of safety, infrastructure, and overall livability for its dwellers and visitors.
After a long research of the geographical map, the location of the projected settlement was selected near the Town of Shelek (150 kilometers from Almaty), which is shown in Figure 1.3
2. Scope
The Project Scope specifies that the author needs to:
Adopt an existing plan of an existing town that could be used as a base for electrical calculations in the Project.
Estimate a power consumption and predict possible users of electrical energy and their patterns of usage.
Calculate the potential of wind and solar resources available at the chosen location.
Design an electrical power supply system that includes the design of generation, transmission, and distribution systems.
Select all the key electrical equipment (that adds more to the cost) required to implement the Project.
Create a Business Plan and prove its financial feasibility for the medium/high voltage power generation, transmission, and distribution parts of the Project.
Consider all the electrical equipment installation standards and safety measures required to maintain power generation, transmission, and distribution system parts of the Project.
Design a special part of the Project that includes a power supply design for a typical residential house that uses a Smart Home technology. In this case, an architectural plan of an existing house can be adopted to serve as a model, for which an electrical power system needs to be created.
The author also has to provide these mandatory deliverables in a form of AutoCAD Drawings:
A general plan of a suggested town, its location on a geographical map, and a list of main consumers of electrical energy.
single-line diagram of power generation, transmission, and distribution systems for a medium/high voltage grid that can be displayed on one drawing.
Single-line diagrams for a low voltage distribution system.
The special part of the Project has to include the following drawings:
A single-line low voltage diagram for a typical house.
A general plan of a typical house that displays how lighting, switches, and outlets should be installed.
A Smart House should have its own power source in case of emergency.
3. Short Overview
Considering all the Project requirements and the Scope, a plan of an already existing town Greensburg, KS was selected because it corresponds to the most of the Project requirements and, most importantly, it is one of the world’s pioneers in adopting and harnessing green energy sources such as wind and solar. Its recent plan to reshape the town to make it more livable, sustainable, and technologically developed perfectly suits the Scope of the Project. Starting from this point the town considered within the Project will also be called Greensburg. Thus, the main Project Milestones are outlined below:
3.1 Power consumption estimation
After the base outline of the planned town was determined, the first task was to estimate the users of energy, their quantity, and their power consumption. The geographical view of Greensburg, KS helped to arrange the main municipal buildings, commercial, office, and residential zones for the project. The main buildings and their parameters are shown in Table 1.1.
3.2 Basic power distribution system design
The first step to form the distribution system is to determine the peak power requirements, an estimation of daily, season, and yearly power consumption. A calculation of where power transmission and distribution substations need to be located regarding the buildings is very important for their effective work. The way how the distribution system is built in the infrastructure system is shown in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1. Greensburg General Plan
3.3 Wind energy potential
This and the next chapters are critical parts of the Project because if the research discovers that there is no reasonable potential to utilize this natural source of energy, then the whole location of the town was selected incorrectly and it needs to be reconsidered. Luckily, the selected place can provide with favourable conditions such as strong wind average speed of 7-8 m/s at 80m displayed in Figure 1.2. Comparing the wind energy potential in the area and the required demand for this energy, it was possible to determine and select the wind generators to cover the main needs of the city in energy. However, another source is required to provide a high level of stability in the system and cover peak hours.
3.4 Solar energy potential
Solar energy is a more reliable and predictable source that can use even during cloudy days in winter. On the other hand, 1kWh of photovoltaic electricity is more expensive than what generated with wind turbines, so most of the solar panels will be placed on the buildings’ roofs right near consumers. PV panels will also require additional equipment to store and invert the energy. The solar potential in the area is moderate but sufficient because the town is positioned in vast grasslands on a latitude of 43,60.
3.5 Single-line power supply system diagram
This chapter includes the design of a generation system using wind turbines and tracking PV panels, a transmission system to deliver this energy from vast fields to the town, and a distribution system inside Greensburg. It is displayed in Figure 2.1. A few calculations need to be made here such as short circuit testing and power losses to select all the main electrical equipment. Low voltage equipment for the distribution system was selected in Figure 3.1.
Figure 2. Single-Line Diagram
Figure 3. Single-Line Diagrams for 0.4kV
3.6 Power supply of a Smart House
This section of the Project includes the design of the single-line diagram for a whole typical house and selection of the general equipment (Figure 4.1). The house needs to comply the strictest energy consumption standards, so it is going to use an energy-saving lighting control system. It comprises a lot of photo and motion sensors that can automatically control the brightness of lights as well as turning them on/off. A plan for the lighting control for two floors is outlined in Figure 5.1 and a plan for electric outlets is shown in Figure 6.1. A few outlets were designed specifically for fast charging of electrical cars.
Figure 4. Single-Line Diagram For a House 0.4kV
Figure 5. House Lighting Plan
Figure 6 House Outlets and PV Panels Plan
3.7 Safety measures and standards
All the selected equipment was chosen to follow the published installation standards inscribed in SNiP regulations of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
4. Budget/Business Plan
The general source of initial capital required to implement the described Project can be in a form of a bank loan or come from venture investors interested in a sustainable energy project. The estimated costs of equipment for the medium voltage system and labour for the main chapters are included in Table 4.1.
Table 4.1. Budget Breakdown.
The average projected cost for electricity will be 10 US cents/kWh, which will be used as a primary source of income. The energy system is going to produce 29 025 million kWh per year, so the Project will cover its expenses in 8 years.
5. Conclusion
The Thesis Work was a 5-month Project that included a very wide range of different sections of electrical engineering. It comprises a lot of calculations and estimations in the following areas:
Generation of electrical energy.
Transmission using medium-voltage systems.
Distribution of energy using low and medium voltage systems.
Generation of energy using wind turbines and their specific requirements.
Generation of solar energy and storage using accumulating batteries.
Inverting the low voltage direct current.
Distribution of energy inside a Smart House.
Smart lighting control in a Smart House.
Following the standards and regulations.
Estimation of the financial feasibility.
On June 6th 2015, the Project was presented for a professors’ council who considered that the Project stayed within the Scope, all the conditions were sustained, and the deliverables were fully met.