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Large Scale
Photovoltaic Public Demonstration Project
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 In
the spring of 2003, OU installed a 10kW
photovoltaic (PV) demonstration project on the new student
apartment complex at 4000 Meadowbrook Drive.
MAP The system uses 550 building integrated PV shingles
manufactured by Uni-Solar,
Inc. of Auburn Hills, MI. Our installation
contractor was Advanced
Distributed Generation out of Maumee, OH.
The project was funded by a grant from the State of Michigan
and by Oakland University.
Click here for the
project Final Report in PDF.
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Click here for Real Time System Data
Get instantaneous weather data, DC
Power, AC Power, and other information.
Click here for Historical System Data
Get daily
energy logs and detailed performance logs in Excel format.
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Design and Layout
This is a unique design using four separate roof sections,
facing east, south, and west. A south facing roof is
best for maximum energy production, but our project required
more area than was available on the south face. Click on
the image to the right for a plan view of our roof
illustrating the four PV shingled surfaces.
There are
no batteries in our system. It is 100% grid inter-tied.
Any power that is produced will be used up by the Community
Building locally, or delivered out to the campus power grid.
See the diagram below:
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 For
a typical residential system, you would likely install 1-3 kW
of PV modules. Today's costs range from $8,000 to
$10,000 per kW of fully installed capacity. Although
this is a sizable investment, you will then have a roof that
will pay for itself. Payback times should be less than
half of a conventional mortgage. Therefore, financing a
PV system does make economic sense over the long term, or to
avoid costly power line installations to a remote home site.
This argument does not account for the avoided
pollution and global warming impacts that accompany any
renewable energy installation.
Click
on the house to the right
to
view a typical residential installation. |
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 Photovoltaic
Science
The PV effect has been around for a very long time. In
fact, Albert Einstein is credited for some discoveries in the
field of PV. A PV cell consists of a crystalline or
amorphous semiconductor material which produces a direct
electrical current when exposed to light.
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11mb PV
Theory Movie
(get
Apple Quicktime)
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Solar Resource in the United States
Obviously, the amount of energy produced by a PV system
depends upon the available solar resource. A map of the
available resource may be viewed below. This map shows
that the great lakes and the pacific northwest regions to have
relatively low solar resource, requiring more PV modules to
get the job done.
However,
when you look at a commercial installation, where the TIME of
energy production is at least, if not more, important as the
AMOUNT of energy production, the picture changes somewhat.
When the solar PV output closely matches the utility grid
load, the PV electricity then becomes much more valuable.
A study of the "effective load carrying capacity", or ELCC, of
PV can be viewed here.
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Conventional Solar
Resource Map |
Solar Resource Map of ELCC |
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Questions,
Ideas, Comments ?
Please
contact the Energy Manager - Jim Leidel at leidel@oakland.edu
phone
248.370.4990 fax
248.370.4442
Educational & Research Project Member:
Laila Guessous,
Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Engineering
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
154 Dodge Hall
Oakland University
Rochester, MI 48309-4478
Phone: 248-370-2183
Fax: 248-370-4416
E-mail:
guessous@oakland.ed
http://www.oakland.edu/~guessous/
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