Renewable Energy Technology Applications - Introduction

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In a quest to share my Engineering knowledge i have gained through trainings, and hands-on experience , i will start writing STEM (Science,Technology,Engineering and Mathematics) articles and my first series will be on Renewable Energy Technologies below:

• Solar Thermal and Concentrating Power Technologies (Series 1).
• Photovoltaics and Daylighting Technologies (Series 2).
• Wind Technologies (Series 3).
• Geothermal Energy Technologies (Series 4).
• Biomass Technologies (Series 5).
• Hydro-power and Ocean Technologies (Series 6).

Each series will have 2-3 parts to keep the articles short, i will use less technical terms for steemians with a non-technical background to follow along.

What are objectives for this series

1. Understand Renewable energy technologies, their capabilities, constraints and evaluation of the options available for each technology.
2. Understand the different operating principles of the different Renewable Energy Technologies.
3. Factors to look for when intergrating Renewable Systems into other or large energy systems.

What is Renewable Energy?

 Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.

What are the motivations for Renewable Energy Technology Implementation

1. Primary reason is cost savings. With improvements in installation, Operations&Maintenance best practices, Renewable Energy become less expensive.
2. Reduced environmental emissions of CO2/NOX.
3. Cushion against volatile fuel prices common in energy escalation rates. Your ytility company will pass along changes to the cost to 'us' customers through the 'fuel adjustment charge' which varies from time to time.
4. Protection against fuel supply shortage or interruptions of fuel supply by providing a secondary redundant energy supply.

Factors affecting Renewable Energy Implemantation

How do you know 'what' technology is best for your application given your location, site and energy load?

1. Cost of Energy: If you are located in an area where utility rates are very high, that's a good investment opportunity for renewable energy technologies.
2. Local renewable energy resources: Solar is rather uniform, but technologies such as wind, hydro need resources that are abundant in other areas and not in others. Under this consider cost of installation and maintenance, what is the efficiency performance and lifetime of that system?
3. Local and Utility policies:What are the policies (local/national) available , is there need for licences for operation of certain systems? What are the LCA (Life Cost Analysis) policies, and Environmental policies with regards to Renewable Enery Systems? And one important aspect, are there any municipal/county/government or utility incentives(tax rebates etc) for Renewable Energy Projects?
4. Economice Parameters such as discount rate and escalation rates that are used to adjust life cycle costing analysis to reflect current patterns in energy costs.

Economics of a Renewable Energy Project

A project is cost effective if:

1. It's a lower cost than the base case of buying utility power.
2. The project IRR (Internal Rate of Return) is greater than the discount rate.
3. The savings to investment ratio is greater than 1.

References

1. Federal Energy Management Program

2. Wikipedia

It won't be fair not to mention the inspiration for writing STEM articles, and writers/engineers like @greenrun have been really inspirational and fellow Facility Engineer @samest and @steemstem for initiating and advancing STEM in Steemit. To the Kenyan community #steemitke @jeanwandimi, @mutimum, @deniskj, @wachera, @njoromuts, @sylviam, @sirkim ,@joel-wandimi,@zippykimani, @stbrians, @mboroto, @y-sandra, thank you team for the support shown far and oneness, TUKO PAMOJA "We are One"