Currently, there are roughly 1.5 million homes with solar panels in the United Kingdom alone. Many speculate that there could be up to 10 million homes equipped with solar panels by the year 2020, with the hopes of having lower energy bills and major reductions in CO2 discharge. As we speak, a researcher at the University of Huddersfield is creating new technologies which would help to enable groups of houses to share their solar energy instead of exporting extra electricity to the national grid. Plus, there are new systems that deal with fault detection, which will help to allow householders to watch and maintain the effectiveness of their solar panels.
Mahmoud Dhimish, a prize-winning PhD student, is leading the project while under the supervision of professors who have experience in high performance computing, electrical supply, and engineering. The research is being carried out on a photovoltaic (PV) system, or a solar panel, which has been installed by the School of Computing and Engineering at the University of Huddersfield.
Dhimish stated that, as of right now, “individual consumers generate electricity from their PV installations and if they are unable to use it, they export it to the network. PV outputs vary unpredictably – as do the electricity demands of each consumer – so supply and demand is difficult to match.” For that reason, Dhimish’s doctoral research focuses on investigating whether or not they can reduce the need to export unused energy to the grid. They plan on doing so by using “demand diversity” among adjacent residences.
Keep in mind that this solution will be enabled through the use of energy shortage shared by clusters of houses as well as the use of “Internet of Things”. This will help to monitor and maintain their electricity demands.
One key aspect of Dhimish’s work is the creation of a new algorithm which will help to facilitate the detection of faults in PV installations. Dhimish has focused parts of his work on the impact that microcracks have in a solar panel’s performance. He has used the resources at the University’s High Performance Computing Research Group to carry out his work. Essentially this research could create monitoring units solely operated by households or through the Cloud.
Co-authored by Dhimish and his PhD supervisor Dr Violeta Homes, their work has been described in a recent article focusing on fault detection algorithm for grid-linked photovoltaic plants, in the Solar Energy journal. Dhimish is also supervised by Dr Bruce Mehrdadi, MSc Engineering Programming Leader, and professor Mark Dales, who spent 30 years in the electricity supply sector and is in charge of the School of Computing and Engineering’s own solar panels.
As mentioned, Dhimish is a prize-winning PhD student. He has taken home a number of awards, including a Chancellor’s Prize for his MSc in Electronic and Communication Engineering. Dhimish was also awarded a scholarship after his research in renewable energy systems. In addition, he has co-authored a number of articles that are awaiting publication while giving lectures to undergraduates on the very subject.
Featured Image: Phsy.org/University of Huddersfield
