USING SOLAR ENERGY IN ELECTRIFICATION: A CASE OF AN OFFICE BUILDING IN QATAR

Abstract

Solar energy is being converted to electricity either for grid transmission or for localized use in houses, offices or in community places. In this project, the availability of solar energy in Qatar in studied and its potential to meet some of the lights during daytime for an office building is explored. The availability of solar energy for conversion to electricity is dependent on many factors: solar irradiance, latitude of the place, the shade angle, the area available for solar PV installation, the type of solar PV cells used, the watt-peak module selected and the efficiency of the inverter. As the focus of this project is on day time provisions for meeting lighting energy, the system does not consider any battery. The analysis shows that in an office building (3 floors; basement, ground, and first floor, with 4133 m2, 18127 m2, 9940 m2 area respectively, with 407 offices and the rest for hallways. The total annual demand is 16,000,000 kWh. The roof area is chosen for the installation of the solar PVs using monocrystalline type of solar PV. The available roof area considered in this report is 21274 m2 for PV installation. The analysis shows that if the PV system, it can meet about 93% (or 5904 kWh) of daily electricity demand for lighting during daytime. The economic analysis of two scenarios were done to calculate the PV system installing cost and the payback period; the first was considering 893 USD/KW (3259.4 QR/KW) which resulted in 14 years as a payback, while the second scenario was Considering 932 USD/KW (3401.8 QR/KW) which resulted in 19 years as a payback. Comparing both Scenarios, it is indicated that the higher the costs are, the larger the payback period gets.