Abstract:
Current trends in climate change are an undeniable
threat to clean, affordable and renewable energy access. One
main cause is the emission of greenhouse gasses from thermal
power plants. According to research on the Kenya household
energy consumption, water heating for cooking, cleaning, and
bathing takes the highest percentage of energy consumed in the
home. To reduce the high percentage household consumption
from water heating, a photovoltaic thermal (PV/T) water heating
system for energy efficiency optimization was designed. The
system is a solar PV/T integration with the heat pump (HP)
and main grid, with an aim of maximizing use of generated
renewable energy instead of the metered power. An optimization
using the OPTI toolbox in MATLAB was done with the objective
to optimize energy usage and minimize the metered cost. For a
sampling period of t
= 15min chosen over a 24-h horizon, an
energy saving efficiency of r = 27.52% (covariance) is achieved.
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