Presenter(s)

Rishabh Sanjaykumar Shukla, Phillip Clayton

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Presentation: 1:15-2:30 p.m., Kennedy Union Ballroom

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Description

Tools for estimating the solar systems for a building often err in oversizing out of caution in their results. This is fine for people who can afford the upfront cost and can wait for the eventual payback. But this makes it difficult for people with lower income to afford a solar system for their home, and lower income families are often the ones who could most use a relief from high energy bills.Our goal is to create an analysis tool that estimates the right size of solar system needed to fulfil the energy needs of a building with the lowest payback period and the least amount of energy going back into the grid.Using data for houses in the Dayton area with average, low, and high energy usage, we have analyzed what the payback period, amount of the load is met, and how much power is going back to the grid for various sizes of solar and battery capacities in a system. We then shifted these data sets +/-4 hours to analyze different scenarios of when energy consumption may line up with solar system production.The results of this analysis have given us a good idea of how certain combinations of solar and battery capacity in a system can work in buildings of different amounts of energy consumption. We will be able to build on this research in the future, to look at what solar systems will be needed if all the energy requirements of a building are converted to electricity. We will also record the actual energy usage of low income homes in the Dayton area to compare to this analysis.

Publication Date

4-19-2023

Project Designation

Graduate Research

Primary Advisor

Kevin Hallinan

Primary Advisor's Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Keywords

Stander Symposium, School of Engineering

Institutional Learning Goals

Scholarship; Practical Wisdom; Critical Evaluation of Our Times

Right-Sizing Solar Systems for Low-Income Housing

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