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The solar photovoltaic (PV) power forecast is crucial for steady grid operation, scheduling, and grid electricity management. In this work, numerous time series forecast methodologies, including the statistical and artificial intelligence-based methods, are studied and compared fastidiously to forecast PV electricity. Moreover, the impact of different environmental conditions for all of the algorithms is investigated. Hourly solar PV power forecasting is done to confirm the effectiveness of various models. Data used in this paper is of one entire year and is acquired from a 100 MW solar power plant, namely, Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park, Bahawalpur, Pakistan. This paper suggests recurrent neural networks (RNNs) as the best-performing forecasting model for PV power output. Furthermore, the bidirectional long-short-term memory RNN framework delivered high accuracy results in all weather conditions, especially under cloudy weather conditions where root mean square error (RMSE) was found lowest 0.0025, R square stands at 0.99, and coefficient of variation of root mean square error (RMSE) Cv was observed 0.0095%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrical infrastructure around the globe is expanding at a rapid rate for the sake of fulfilling power demands in the domestic, commercial and entertainment industries aiming to boost the living standards. In this regard, renewable energy sources (RES) are globally accepted potential candidates for maintaining inexhaustible, clean, and reliable electricity with a supplementary feature of economic prospect. The efficiency of power distribution at reduced cost to the consumers can be further enhanced by introducing a two-way billing system so-called net-metering which has the potential to overcome issues such as voltage regulation, power blackouts, overstressed grid and need for expensive storage systems thereby making it beneficial for the grid and the end user. This envisioning has encouraged the Government of Pakistan to install net-metering infrastructure at places which accommodate surplus renewable energy reserves. According to the Electric Power Act 1997, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) issued the net-metering rules and regulations in September 2015 by the endorsement of Federal Government which allowed the distribution companies in Pakistan to buy surplus electricity units generated by the consumers in order to partly reimburse the units imported from the utility grid. The aim behind this research work is to promote renewable energy utilization through net-metering mechanism in order to achieve maximum power. The export of units from consumer side to utility grid and vice versa can be made through bidirectional energy meter. In this paper, a solar net-metering analysis has been carried out on ETAP software to determine its benefits in a distribution network. Different scenarios have been investigated, and it is concluded that solar net-metering technique has multiple influential benefits, e.g., improvement in voltage regulation, reduction in transmission and distribution losses, increase in power availability, less billing to consumers, and reduction of loading on utility grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, thermal modeling of a typical rural house in Pakistan has been done using BEopt, to determine the hourly load profile. Using the load data, the design of a stand-alone PV system has been completed using HOMER Pro. The designed system consists of a 5.8 kW PV with eight batteries of 12 V, 255 Ah, and a 1.4 kW inverter. The system analyses show that such system can support mainly lighting and appliance load in a rural house. The dynamic model of the designed system has been simulated in MATLAB-Simulink. Perturbation and observation-based algorithm has been used for maximum power extraction from PV. Simulation results indicate that the system can provide a stable voltage and frequency for the domestic load. The method and analysis presented here can be used for the PV system design for other parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar energy is directly converted into electrical energy by using photovoltaic (PV) panels. The efficiency of PV panel varies with its orientation and tilt angle with the horizontal plane. In this paper, we investigate the optimum tilt angle of solar panels installed at Sukkur IBA University. The optimum angle for tilted surfaces varying from 0° to 90° in steps of 1° was calculated for the values of which the daily total solar radiation was maximum for a specific period. It was found that the optimum tilt angle changed between 0° and 61.1° throughout the year in Sukkur IBA University, Sindh Pakistan (latitude = 27.7268 ° N, longitude = 68.8191 ° E). For calculating irradiance, optimal fixed (15 and 29.5 degrees) and variable tilt angles are used for every month of year 2019. The irradiance calculated at 15 degrees tilt angle is compared with the fixed angle of 29.5 and variable angles. It was found that optimal tilt angle for the region of Sukkur located in northern Pakistan is to be 29.5 degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study signifies the need for a smart integrated decentralized solar energy system in Pakistan. Since the outlook of energy is highly dominated by its power sector, policy measures must be adopted to ensure its penetration in the system of any country. After the industrial, the housing sector is the major energy-consuming sector. The goal of this study is to assess energy generation through a smart integrated decentralized solar energy system in the power hub of a commercial area in Taxila, Pakistan. Model development involves a hypothetical model built on LabVIEW which allows the user interface a way to intermingle with the source code. It permits the user to the transformation of the values sent to the source code and sees the information that the source code calculates. The proposed system is a collaborative sharing integrated decentralized solar system that credits sunlight-based energy framework proprietors for the power they add to different buildings due to the collaborative sharing mechanism at Rs.10 per kWh. This low-cost electricity is available at your doorstep that you can share according to the collaborative sharing basis that will not range any certain variable. Results from the literature describe that 30% of the cost associated with the commercial price of electricity amounts to distribution cost. This system of the utilization of energy would be applied at a local level to achieve the maximum power generation from solar panels through blockchain use of solar systems, especially in regions that have no entrance to traditional power with little odds of getting associated in the next 5-10 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing population, depleting fossil fuels, economic expansions, and energy intensive life style demand are resulting in higher energy prices. We use energy as of heat and electricity, which can directly be obtained from sun using thermal collectors and solar cells. Solar thermal systems are gaining attention for water and space heating applications due to green aspects of solar energy. A solar thermal collector is a vital part of solar thermal energy system to absorb radiant energy from the sun. In this study, a solar water heating (SWH) system has been designed and simulated in the TRNSYS ® software using thermal and chemical properties of heat transfer fluids using REFPROP for dwellings located on ±31° latitudes (+31 Lahore in Pakistan and -31° Perth in Australia). We present an efficiency parametric optimization-based model for water and space heating. Simulation results for four types of solar thermal collectors are presented, and performance is analyzed on the basis of output temperature ( T out ), solar fraction (f), and collector efficiency (η). This study evaluates the comparative performance of evacuated tube collector (ETC), flat-plate collector (FPC), compound parabolic concentrator (CPC), and thermosiphon-driven systems. Our findings conclude the evacuated glass tube collector achieves the highest solar fraction, i.e., 50% of demand coverage during August in Pakistan and February in Australia, with an overall average of 43% annually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional means of electrical energy generation are costly, create environmental pollution, and demand a high level of maintenance and also going to end one day. This has made it crucial to exploit the untapped prospective of the environmentally friendly renewable energy resources. To address this problem, present research proposed an efficient, everlasting, and environment-friendly grid-connected PV system at The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan (latitude: 29° 22 ′ 34 ″ N, longitude: 71° 44 ′ 57 E). Bahawalpur is one of those sites where the potential of solar energy is immense. The global daily horizontal solar irradiance at the site is 1745.85 kWh/m2, having average solar irradiation of 5.9 kWh/m2 per day, and the ambient average temperature is about 25.7°C. In this research, the performance ratio and different power losses just like soiling, PV module losses, inverter, and losses due to temperature are taken into account and calculated by using PVSyst. The coal saving per day is 15369.3 kg which is equal to planting 147600 teak trees over a lifetime. The cost of the energy produced is 0.11 US $/kWh whereas in Pakistan the conventional energy tariff is 0.18 $/kWh. From the simulation results, the value of PR comes out 83.8%, and the CUF value is 16% with a total energy generation of 4908 MWh/year. The performance analysis of this grid-connected system would help in the designing, analysis, operation, and maintenance of the new grid-connected systems for different locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralized power generation efficaciously merges technological advances in a rapidly changing face of power networks introducing new power system components, advanced control, renewable sources, elegant communication, and web technology paving the way for the so called smart grids. Distributed generation technology lies at the intersection point of power systems, power electronics, control engineering, renewable energy, and communication systems which are not mutually exclusive subjects. Key features of renewable integration in a distribution network include loss minimization, voltage stability, power quality improvement, and low-cost consumption resulting from abundant natural resources such as solar or wind energy. In this research work, a case study has been carried out at a 132 kV grid station of Layyah, Pakistan, which has active losses, reactive losses, low power factor, low voltage on the demand side, and overloaded transformers and distribution lines. As a result, power outage issue is frequent on the consumer side. To overcome this issue, a simulation of load flow of this system is performed using the Newton-Raphson method due to its less computational time, fewer iterations, fast convergence, and independence from slack bus selection. It finds the harsh condition in which there were 23 overloaded transformers, 38 overloaded distribution lines, poor voltage profile, and low power factor at the demand side. There is a deficit of 24 MW in the whole system along with 4.58 MW active and 12.30 MVAR reactive power losses. To remove power deficiency, distributed generation using solar plants is introduced to an 11 kV distribution system with a total of 24 units with each unit having a capacity of 1 MW. Consequently, active and reactive power losses are reduced to 0.548 MW and 0.834 MVAR, respectively. Furthermore, the voltage profile improves, the power factor enhances, and the line losses reduce to a great extent. Finally, overloaded transformers and distribution lines also return to normal working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]