Abstract
Olive mills are extensive in the Mediterranean Basin, and Spain constitutes approximately 45% of global production. The industrial sector faces a new energetic paradigm where distributed generation provided by small renewable energy sources may reduce the dependence from fossil energy sources as well as avoid energy distribution losses. Photovoltaic self-consumption systems can play an important role in confronting this challenge due to their modularity and their decreasing cost. Most of self-sufficiency energy studies are focused on building sector and discussions about the idiosyncrasy of industrial load profiles, and their matching capability with photovoltaic generation profiles can be scarcely found. This work analyzes the potential of photovoltaic self-consumption systems as a function of the array power, array tilt, and orientation angles to face the electric consumption in olive mills. Different recording intervals and reporting periods are considered. Results show that a self-sufficiency index of 40% may be achieved on olive harvest basis. Moreover, due to the load profile particularities, percentage error lower than 1.6% has been found when considering a recording interval of 60 min when matching the olive load consumption and photovoltaic generation profiles. Chosen array tilt and orientation angles may be key parameters to maximize the self-sufficiency index.
Highlights
World electricity generation from renewable energy is expected to considerably increase in the coming years, where wind and photovoltaics may constitute 29% and 40%, respectively, in world electricity generation by 2050 [1]
More than 1700 olive mills are found in Spain, which produce more than 1,000,000 tons of olive oil per year according to the Agencia de Información y Control Alimentarios (AICA) [11,12]
These small values of percentage error (PE) may be due to the shape of olive mills load profile: it is almost constant with a low variability during the daylight hours and the
Summary
World electricity generation from renewable energy is expected to considerably increase in the coming years, where wind and photovoltaics may constitute 29% and 40%, respectively, in world electricity generation by 2050 [1]. Photovoltaic systems are used in different applications [3,4] such us dairy farms [5], wineries [6], agriculture in sea [7], olive mills [8], etc. Olive mills are very extensive in the Mediterranean Basin, and Spain provides approximately 50%. More than 1700 olive mills are found in Spain, which produce more than 1,000,000 tons of olive oil per year according to the Agencia de Información y Control Alimentarios (AICA) [11,12]
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