Energy-Economic-Environmental Analysis of On-Grid Solar System for Electricity and Hydrogen Production at Homemade Scale: Effect of Different Shades

Abstract

As an energy source, solar cells can be central to peak load control in different power companies. Hydrogen production can be cost-effective if the generated electricity is unusable. Shades reduce solar cell current and fundamentally alter panel function, making it necessary to restore panels to optimum power generation. Owing to the issues outlined in this paper, the energy-economic-environmental effect of a shade detection algorithm was examined for different shade scenarios, and domestic-scale solar hydrogen production was evaluated. As the effect of the partial shade detection algorithm on the amount of solar hydrogen production has not been investigated quantitatively so far, this issue was discussed in this study. The algorithm and laboratory equipment developed by the authors were used to detect the partial shadow. Thanks to the respected reviewer, the following sentence was added to the abstract. The analyses in HOMER V2.81 software used 20-year average data for a residential building in the city of Tehran obtained from the NASA website. The results recommended that the designed algorithm increases hydrogen production in different scenarios between 5.8% and 32.9%. The results also revealed that the designed algorithm significantly lessen the pollutants between 100 kg/year and 240 kg/year.