Being located in the equatorial zone, hot humid tropical region is commonly recognised as a promising site to adopt solar power systems. It has ample solar radiation with average daily irradiance of exceeding 5 kWh/m2. The sunshine duration could over 4 hours easily. Despite of these encouraging figures, the sky ineluctably facing cloudy skies and rainfall that might potentially challenge the performance of any solar powered technologies. Thus, the effects of this phenomenon should be accounted in the system design to promote the solar application in this zone.
Cloudy Skies and Rain Fall Might Potentially Challenge The Performance of Any Solar Powered Technologies
Global Solar Irradiance Pattern – A Sample Day
Don't be shellfish...
Renewable Energy Solar Power
Published April 2, 2013 by Laney Siew
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electrical power, windmills for mechanical power, wind pumps for water pumping or drainage, or sails to propel ships.
Large wind farms consist of hundreds of individual wind turbines which are connected to the electric power transmission network. Offshore wind farms can harness more frequent and powerful winds than are available to land-based installations and have less visual impact on the landscape but construction costs are considerably higher. Furthermore, offshore poses problems when considering accessibility for maintenance issues. Small onshore wind facilities are used to provide electricity to isolated locations and utility companies increasingly buy surplus electricity produced by small domestic wind turbines.
Wind power, as an alternative to fossil fuels, is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, produces no greenhouse gas emissions during operation and uses little land. The effects on the environment are generally less problematic than those from other power sources. As of 2011, Denmark is generating more than a quarter of its electricity from wind and 83 countries around the world are using wind power on a commercial basis. In 2010 wind energy production was over 2.5% of total worldwide electricity usage, and growing rapidly at more than 25% per annum. The monetary cost per unit of energy produced is similar to the cost for new coal and natural gas installations.
Wind power is very consistent from year to year but has significant variation over shorter time scales. The intermittency of wind seldom creates problems when used to supply up to 20% of total electricity demand, but as the proportion increases, a need to upgrade the grid, and a lowered ability to supplant conventional production can occur. Power management techniques such as having excess capacity storage, geographically distributed turbines, dispatchable backing sources, storage such as pumped-storage hydroelectricity, exporting and importing power to neighboring areas or reducing demand when wind production is low, can greatly mitigate these problems. In addition, weather forecasting permits the electricity network to be readied for the predictable variations in production that occur.
Wind Power System Configuration
Info source: Wikipedia
Renewable Energy Wind Power
Solar power is the conversion of sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV), or indirectly using concentrated solar power (CSP). Concentrated solar power systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. Photovoltaics convert light into electric current using the photoelectric effect.
Commercial concentrated solar power plants were first developed in the 1980s. The 354 MW SEGS CSP installation is the largest solar power plant in the world, located in the Mojave Desert of California. Other large CSP plants include the Solnova Solar Power Station (150 MW) and the Andasol solar power station (150 MW), both in Spain. The over 200 MW Agua Caliente Solar Project in the United States, and the 214 MW Charanka Solar Park in India, are the world’s largest photovoltaic power stations.