A Novel Energy System Integrated With Solar Power, Advanced Electric Vehicle and Home Heat Pumps

Abstract

In order to reduce the quantity of CO2 emissions economically, it is important to construct a Smart Community which is expected to be one of the solutions. In a Smart Community, energy supply and demand system is developing to manage with ICT (Information and Communication Technology) to utilize energy efficiently and increase the amount of renewable energy. In one of the systems, “Photovoltaic power generator (hereinafter referred to as PV) & Electric Vehicle (hereinafter referred to as EV) Smart System” has been developed. In the “PV & EV Smart System”, PV power is charged directly to the EV battery, and then the charged PV power is consumed by running and air-conditioning energy of a car and supplied to a home. This system is able to reduce the quantity of CO2 emissions with high economic efficiency. In order to expand the system, it is necessary to spread EV. So, it should solve the issues of short driving distance, the high cost of storage battery and the risk of dead battery. Therefore, the authors have proposed an advanced EV such as AI-EV (Air-conditioner Integrated Electric Vehicle). AI-EV has a novel hybrid system which drives the air-conditioning system and generates electric power in the case of a low air-conditioning load through the use of a small-engine. PV power can not only reduce car fuels but also replace with gas and liquid fuels which are used at a home, causing the huge effect of reducing CO2 emissions as the whole system. In this paper, a novel energy system which is integrated with solar power, advanced electric vehicle and CO2 heat pump water heater as home heat pumps has been proposed. A mathematical simulation model which evaluates for the PV power generation, AI-EV energy consumption and home heat pumps has been developed. CO2 emissions and economic efficiency are calculated and compared with those of the conventional system. As the result, the novel energy system is able to reduce more than 30% of the quantity of CO2 emissions in comparison with the conventional system as the whole system, and the system can reduce about 60% of the quantity of CO2 emissions in comparison with the conventional system as a home system. The economic efficiency is evaluated by more than 6.0% of IRR (Internal Rate of Return) without some subsidies when the legal service life of the depreciation equipment is assumed 14 years. Therefore, the novel energy system can be widely spread in the future.