Design of hybrid renewable energy system for near zero energy building in Qatar

Abstract

Environmental development is the fourth pillar of Qatar National Vision 2030, which has been launched to draw a clear roadmap for the future of Qatar. The vision is aiming towards a balance between developmental needs and the protection of Qatar’s natural environment, including land, air and sea. As a contribution to the vision, this thesis is produced. People nowadays have awareness about renewable energy and its benefits. However, renewable energy sources are unpredictable and changeable with climate change. The best solution to overcome these challenges is to combine multiple renewable energy sources in one energy system. Combining multiple RE sources provides reliable system that meets the energy demand. It is very important in designing a hybrid system to optimally size the system components as sufficient enough to meet the load requirements with minimum total costs. In this thesis, an optimal sizing of a hybrid renewable energy system for an existing building is proposed. The aim is to maximize the renewable energy ratio of the building and to minimize the total net present worth of cost as well as CO2 emission. The proposed hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) consists of solar panels, wind turbines and waste energy management plant. Furthermore, a connection to the National grid is provided, where the proposed system can buy and sell from and to the grid. In this study a year collected data are used to calculate hourly power of PV panels, wind turbines and waste boilers for the whole year. Different designs with different combination of renewable energy sources are generated to match the demand of an existing building. The design with low considerable cost and low considerable CO2 emission id considered the optimal solution.