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Solar Energy Systems: Challenges, Opportunities and Advances

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A2: Solar Energy and Photovoltaic Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 June 2023) | Viewed by 8134

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering Research Unit, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
Interests: hydrology; environmental science; hydropower; energy market
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar-Delhi G.T. Road, Phagwara, Punjab 144411, India
Interests: renewable energy systems; virtual power plant; artificial intelligence in control systems

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Guest Editor
Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering Research Unit, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
Interests: nexus; energy transition; climate impact on energy technology performances; energy demand; energy flexibility
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, 144411 Punjab, India
Interests: power system optimization and control; renewable energy; energy storage devices

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Guest Editor
Water, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Technology, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
Interests: rivers; environmental engineering; civil engineering; hydrology; water resources engineering; hydrological modeling;hydraulics; climate change; environment; water quality
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering Research Unit, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
Interests: smart energy systems; distributed energy systems; energy sustainability; renewable energy; nuclear energy; energy transition

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Energy, water resources, commodities production, scientific knowledge and technological expertise are the basis of the development of modern industrial and post-industrial societies. The recent economic developments implying large-scale industries and inducing large urban concentrations tend to require fairly concentrated energy supplies. Large interconnected systems have been successful in providing these supplies based on renewable energy generation, wherever there is potential for the latter. An often-referenced answer for the issue of expanding demands for energy and decreasing energy sources is to tap the energy from the Sun.

Solar energy systems like photovoltaic (PV) systems and concentrated solar power (CSP) advancements are some of the main renewable energy sources (RESs) that convert solar energy into power in a climate-friendly way and represent a free energy source. As of late, among all of the CSP system types, the central tower receiver (CTR) innovation draws broad consideration as a promising contender for enormous solar thermal plants in view of its high productivity coming about because of its high working temperature. The benefits and cost decrease of solar energy systems, particularly PV systems, has prompted rapid expansion in the combination of PV systems in recent years. Be that as it may, the high entrance level of solar PV systems affects the system's power quality because of the disparity between demand patterns and solar resources. These drawbacks limit the high infiltration levels of PV systems. Thusly, PV itself might present another challenge to the electrical framework rather than being a piece of the solution. Additionally, the planning and demonstration of solar energy systems, especially central tower receiver power plants (CTRPPs), have numerous troubles assuming all specialized boundaries are considered.

The development and rapid deployment of solar systems worldwide raise the question of materiality, climate resilience, water consumption and land use for producing, using, and decommissioning the technology. The whole technology chain requires materials and consumes energy to producerequiring special attention to avoid rearranging rather than solving the energy problem. The high penetration of solar systems, representing intermittent resources, calls for a better management of other more stable clean energy resources such as hydropower. The intermittency of solar will also be impacted by the future climate changes that will present broad variations depending on regions. This Special Issue is open to all contributions advancing the knowledge on the climate, land, energy, water, and material use (CLEWm) nexus.

The main subject areas include but are not limited to the following:

  • Photovoltaic (PV)
    • Materials for PV conversion;
    • Solar cells, modules, and systems;
    • Novel measurement, test, and characterization methods and systems;
    • Processes and tools for industrialization;
    • High-efficiency cells, multijunction;
    • Concentrating PV, space applications;
    • PV heating, cooling, and storage systems;
    • Power electronics for PV;
    • Large-area PV power plants;
    • Grid integration;
    • Stand-alone systems;
  • Solar thermal systems
    • Materials for solar thermal conversion;
    • Flat panel collectors;
    • Heating, cooling, and storage systems;
    • Concentrating systems;
    • Solar and hybrid power plants;
  • Solar technologies and the nexus
  • Climate change impact on solar production;
  • Climate, land, energy, water, and material use (CLEWm) nexus;
  • Environmental issues, recycling, lifetime analysis, degradation;
    • Solar in the Arctic;
    • Solar power in the energy system;
    • Floating photovoltaics;
    • Energy policy;
    • Economy of solar conversion systems;
    • Radiation measurement and prediction;
    • Modelling, yield measurements, forecast, and predictions.

Dr. Epari Ritesh Patro
Prof. Dr. Sachin Mishra
Dr. Jean-Nicolas Louis
Dr. Javed Dhillon
Dr. Ali Torabi Haghighi
Dr. Antonio Caló
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 6582 KiB  
Article
Comparative Reliability Assessment of Hybrid Si/SiC and Conventional Si Power Module Based PV Inverter Considering Mission Profile of India and Denmark Locations
by Sainadh Singh Kshatri, Javed Dhillon, Sachin Mishra, Ali Torabi Haghighi, Julian David Hunt and Epari Ritesh Patro
Energies 2022, 15(22), 8612; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15228612 - 17 Nov 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1481
Abstract
Energy harnessing from renewable energy sources has become more flexible with power electronic technologies. Recent advancements in power electronic technologies achieve converter efficiency higher than 98%. Today, reliable power electronic devices are needed to design a PV-based energy converter (inverter) to reduce the [...] Read more.
Energy harnessing from renewable energy sources has become more flexible with power electronic technologies. Recent advancements in power electronic technologies achieve converter efficiency higher than 98%. Today, reliable power electronic devices are needed to design a PV-based energy converter (inverter) to reduce the risk of failure and maintenance costs during operation. Wide-bandgap SiC devices are becoming more common in power electronic converters. These devices are designed to reduce switching loss and improve the efficiency of the system. Nevertheless, the cost of SiC devices is a major concern. Hence, to improve the reliability of the PV inverter while considering the economic aspects, this paper develops a highly reliable PV inverter with a hybrid Si/SiC power module that consists of a Si-IGBT with a SiC anti-parallel diode. A test case of a 3 kW PV inverter is considered for reliability analysis. The loading of the PV inverter is done under uncertain environmental conditions by considering the yearly Mission Profile (MP) data related to Ambient Temperature (AT) and Solar Irradiance (SI) at the India and Denmark locations. The effectiveness of the proposed hybrid Si/SiC power module is tested by comparing it with a conventional IGBT power module. The results showcase the marked improvement in PV inverter reliability with the proposed hybrid power module. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Systems: Challenges, Opportunities and Advances)
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13 pages, 3286 KiB  
Article
Multivariant Analysis of Photovoltaic Performance with Consideration of Self-Consumption
by Krystian Janusz Cieślak
Energies 2022, 15(18), 6732; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15186732 - 14 Sep 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1238
Abstract
The presented work contains the comparison of a different photovoltaic system approach, in terms of monthly energy production profiles, with detailed user needs profiles. Two types of investors were taken into account—a company where the yearly energy consumption exceeded 50 MWh and a [...] Read more.
The presented work contains the comparison of a different photovoltaic system approach, in terms of monthly energy production profiles, with detailed user needs profiles. Two types of investors were taken into account—a company where the yearly energy consumption exceeded 50 MWh and a standard household where the yearly energy consumption was around 6 MWh. Moreover, two different scenarios were considered; the first one was focused on the maximization of the energy production during a year by choosing optimal azimuth and tilt angles, whereas the second PV system was based on the East–West azimuth angles, which usually enables one to have better energy self-consumption, which leads to sustainable energy usage. Energy production profiles, along with users’ energy needs profiles, were analyzed in terms of sustainability, investment payback time, and energy loss in the face of the new Polish Renewable Energy Law. Recent changes in the Renewable Energy Law in Poland, which came into force on the 1 April 2022, have changed the way many investors are thinking about investing in photovoltaic systems. The main difference is how the Energy Distributor is obliged to trade the photovoltaic electrical energy injected into the grid by Prosumers. The so-called “net metering”, which is kind of a barter deal, was changed to “net billing”—selling energy at a wholesale price. Net billing is believed to be less profitable than net metering due to a significant price difference between the bought and sold energy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Systems: Challenges, Opportunities and Advances)
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25 pages, 7795 KiB  
Article
Optimal Allocation of Renewable Distributed Generators and Electric Vehicles in a Distribution System Using the Political Optimization Algorithm
by Nagaraju Dharavat, Suresh Kumar Sudabattula, Suresh Velamuri, Sachin Mishra, Naveen Kumar Sharma, Mohit Bajaj, Elmazeg Elgamli, Mokhtar Shouran and Salah Kamel
Energies 2022, 15(18), 6698; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15186698 - 13 Sep 2022
Cited by 34 | Viewed by 2403
Abstract
This paper proposes an effective approach to solve renewable distributed generators (RDGs) and electric vehicle charging station (EVCS) allocation problems in the distribution system (DS) to reduce power loss (PLoss) and enhance voltage profile. The RDGs considered for this work are [...] Read more.
This paper proposes an effective approach to solve renewable distributed generators (RDGs) and electric vehicle charging station (EVCS) allocation problems in the distribution system (DS) to reduce power loss (PLoss) and enhance voltage profile. The RDGs considered for this work are solar, wind and fuel cell. The uncertainties related to RDGs are modelled using probability distribution functions (PDF). These sources’ best locations and sizes are identified by the voltage stability index (VSI) and political optimization algorithm (POA). Furthermore, EV charging strategies such as the conventional charging method (CCM) and optimized charging method (OCM) are considered to study the method’s efficacy. The developed approach is studied on Indian 28 bus DS. Different cases are considered, such as a single DG, multiple DGs and a combination of DGs and EVs. This placement of multiple DGs along with EVs, considering proper scheduling patterns, minimizes PLoss and considerably improves the voltage profile. Finally, the proposed method is compared with other algorithms, and simulated results show that the POA method produces better results in all aspects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Systems: Challenges, Opportunities and Advances)
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16 pages, 5454 KiB  
Article
Marine Predator Algorithm (MPA)-Based MPPT Technique for Solar PV Systems under Partial Shading Conditions
by Sampath Kumar Vankadara, Shamik Chatterjee, Praveen Kumar Balachandran and Lucian Mihet-Popa
Energies 2022, 15(17), 6172; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15176172 - 25 Aug 2022
Cited by 29 | Viewed by 2156
Abstract
To satisfy global electrical energy requirements, photovoltaic (PV) energy is a promising source that can be obtained from the available alternative sources, but partial shading conditions (PSCs), which trap the local maxima power point instead of the global maxima peak power point (GMPP), [...] Read more.
To satisfy global electrical energy requirements, photovoltaic (PV) energy is a promising source that can be obtained from the available alternative sources, but partial shading conditions (PSCs), which trap the local maxima power point instead of the global maxima peak power point (GMPP), are a major problem that needs to be addressed in PV systems to achieve the uninterruptable continuous power supply desired by consumers. To avoid these difficulties, a marine predator algorithm (MPA), which is a bio-inspired meta-heuristic algorithm, is applied in this work. The work is validated and executed using MATLAB/Simulink software along with hardware experimentation. The superiority of the proposed MPA method is validated using four different PSCs on the PV system, and their characteristics are compared to those of existing algorithms. The four different PSC outcomes in terms of GMPP are case 1 at 0.07 s 995.0 Watts; case 2 at 0.06 s 674.5 Watts; case 3 at 0.04 s 654.1 Watts; and case 4 at 0.04 s 364.2 Watts. The software- and hardware-validated results of the proposed MPA method show its supremacy in terms of convergence time, efficiency, accuracy, and extracted power. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Systems: Challenges, Opportunities and Advances)
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