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Rapidly and remotely monitoring and receiving the solar cell systems status parameters, solar irradiance, temperature, and humidity, are critical issues in enhancement their efficiency. Hence, in the present article an improved smart prototype of internet of things (IoT) technique based on embedded system through NodeMCU ESP8266 (ESP-12E) was carried out experimentally. Three different regions at Egypt; Luxor, Cairo, and El-Beheira cities were chosen to study their solar irradiance profile, temperature, and humidity by the proposed IoT system. The monitoring data of solar irradiance, temperature, and humidity were live visualized directly by Ubidots through hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) protocol. The measured solar power radiation in Luxor, Cairo, and El-Beheira ranged between 216-1000, 245-958, and 187-692 W/m2 respectively during the solar day. The accuracy and rapidity of obtaining monitoring results using the proposed IoT system made it a strong candidate for application in monitoring solar cell systems. On the other hand, the obtained solar power radiation results of the three considered regions strongly candidate Luxor and Cairo as suitable places to build up a solar cells system station rather than El-Beheira. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The operation and effectiveness of a solar-powered underground water pumping system are affected by many environmental and technical factors. The impact of these factors must be investigated to be considered when developing these systems and to ensure their dependability. This study evaluated the dependability and performance of photovoltaic water pumping system (PVWPS) under real operating conditions by examining the effects of solar irradiance, panels' temperature, and components' efficiency. From December 2020 to June 2021, experiments were conducted on a 10 hp PVWPS located in Bani Salamah, Al-Qanater-Giza Governorate, Egypt, at latitude 30.3° N, longitude 30.8° E, and 19 m above sea level. The irradiance values reached 755.7, 792.7, and 805.7 W/m2 at 12:00 p.m. in December, March, and June, respectively. Furthermore, the irradiance has a significant impact on the pump flow rate, as the amount of pumped water during the day reached 129, 164.1, and 181.8 m3/day, respectively. The panels' temperatures rose to 35.7 °C, 39.9 °C, and 44 °C, respectively. It was observed that when the temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius, efficiency falls by 0.48%. The average efficiency of photovoltaic solar panels reached its highest value in March (13.8%) and its lowest value in December (13%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, renewable energy resources (RESs) have been utilized to supply electricity to remote areas, instead of the conventional methods of electrical energy production. In this paper, the optimal design of a standalone hybrid RES comprising photovoltaic (PV), wind turbine (WT), and biomass sources as well as an energy storage system, such as a hydro-pumped storage system, is studied. The problem of the optimal sizing of the generating units in the proposed energy system is formulated as an optimization problem and the algorithms heap-based optimizer (HBO), grey wolf optimizer (GWO), and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are applied to achieve the optimal sizing of each component of the proposed grid-independent hybrid system. The optimization problem is formulated depending on the real-time meteorological data of the Ataka region on the Red Sea in Egypt. The main goal of the optimization process is to minimize the cost of energy (COE) and the loss of power supply probability (LPSP), while satisfying the constraints of system operation. The results clarify that the HBO algorithm succeeded in obtaining the best design for the selected RE system with the minimum COE of 0.2750 USD/kWh and a net present cost (NPC) of USD 8,055,051. So, the HBO algorithm has the most promising performance over the GWO algorithm in addressing this optimization problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar photovoltaic panels are increasingly being used throughout the world, particularly in Egypt, where a station has been constructed in the city of Aswan with a capacity of 1480 MW, and is classified as one of the largest photovoltaic plants in the Middle East country, where photovoltaic systems are characterized as environmentally friendly and do not produce any pollutants, and photovoltaic systems have the ability to operate with diffuse radiation. It is therefore very important to understand how photovoltaic panels respond to changing weather conditions and how climate conditions affect the performance of photovoltaic cells, as only 15–20% of solar radiation can be converted to electricity, while the rest is wasted as thermal heat. There are two very important factors influencing the efficiency of the photovoltaic cells: the cell temperature and the solar radiation intensity on the photovoltaic cells. Cooling of the optical surfaces is one of the main factors that must be considered in order to achieve the highest efficiency when operating the solar PV systems. By using the appropriate cooling technology for the photovoltaic cells, the electrical efficiency is improved, and the cell degradation rate is decreased over time, which increases the life span of the PV panels. In some applications, such as industrial and domestic applications, excess energy removed with cooling technology could be used. The cooling mediums used to cool the PV panels are water, air, PCM, and nanofluid. Also, the spectral splitting utilization represents a good solution for hybrid solar photovoltaic-thermal applications to obtain higher performance of the photovoltaic. This paper gives a brief analysis of technologies used to improve PV systems efficiency in terms of the nature of cooling media, spectral splitting, and reflectors. Moreover, the economic study of these techniques is presented to demonstrate their economic feasibility. The aims of the present review paper are to provide good knowledge and understanding of all technologies used to improve the performance of PV systems and demonstrate the economic feasibility of these technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: As a global common trend for fossil fuels independence, renewable energy plays a great role to save a clean source of energy. As a result of the high solar energy potential in Egypt, successive incentive polices had been introduced by the Egyptian electricity authority to encourage the deployment of small‐scale residential rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems. This paper explores the impacts of installing a grid‐connected PV battery system from both technical and economic point of view under the existing incentive policy and energy purchasing and selling price in Egypt. The Egypt case is considered as a case study. The study investigates the current Egyptian Incentive Policy situation and criteria for high electricity load profile. The economic evaluation of various sizes of the PV battery system is carried out based on different economic measures such as net present value (NPV), self‐sufficiency (S‐S), and electricity bill savings. The methodology is based on the assessment of different technical and economical indices as well as on performing sensitivity analysis. A MATLAB code was purposely developed and implemented to evaluate the economic effect of the installed system considering the effect of battery capital cost and discount rate variations. A net energy metering (NEM) incentive policy is suggested to increase and maximize the financial profits from installing PV battery system and increase the independency from the utility grid. The results showed that doubling the sellback power price to $0.089/kWh instead of $0.04/kWh will decrease the profitable PV system size to the half and will increase the NPV to the double. Under FiT incentive policy, installing 25 kWp PV system can achieve 50% of S‐S and adding 12.5 kWh of batteries will increase it to 75%, while under the NEM incentive policy, installing 15 kWp PV system can achieve 47% of S‐S and the 75% S‐S can be achieved by adding 15 kWh of batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of zero-energy buildings was developed due to the high cost of electricity and the availability of renewable energy. This study presents detailed design steps for a zero building using a grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system with a battery to supply the load demand for a building in Egypt (31.0409°N, 31.3785°E). In the system design, the sizes of the system components are determined, including the sizes of the PV cells, batteries, chargers, and controllers, such that they fulfill the load requirements. Maximum power tracking is designed to achieve maximum utilization of solar energy. In addition, a cooling model for the PV system is introduced to increase its efficiency. The PV performance with and without the thermal absorber is theoretically investigated and compared using a three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer model. A coupled thermal-electrical iterative model is also used to estimate the system's hourly performance. Findings show that increasing the cooling flow rate for the proposed PV system from 0 L/min to 1 L/min significantly decreases the temperature of the PV module from 60 °C to 41 °C at a solar radiation of 650 W/m2. The theoretical results show that using the PV thermal technology at a coolant flow rate of 2 L/min /module generates the highest electrical power along with enough thermal energy for residential building heating. The outlet warm water from the cooling process has been used household uses to achieve a zero-building theory. This thermal energy can also be used in floor heating radiant systems with high energy efficiency and good thermal comfort. Furthermore, the proposed system can sell 33.5 and 61.9 kWh energy to the grid per day in summer and winter, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing access to clean, reliable, and affordable energy by adopting hybrid power systems is important for countries looking to achieve their sustainable development goals. This paper presents an optimization method for sizing a hybrid system including photovoltaic (PV), wind turbines with a hydroelectric pumped storage system. In this paper, the implementation of different optimization techniques has been investigated to achieve optimal sizing of grid-connected hybrid renewable energy systems. A comprehensive study has been carried out between Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA), Water Cycle Algorithm (WCA), Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA), and Grey Wolf optimizer (GWO) to validate each one. Moreover, the optimal sizing of the system's components has been studied using real-time information and meteorological data of Ataka region located in Egypt. The purpose of the optimization process is to minimize the cost of energy from this hybrid system while satisfying the operation constraints including high reliability of the hybrid power supply, small fluctuation in the energy injected to the grid, and high utilization of the photovoltaic and wind complementary properties. MATLAB software package has been used to evaluate each optimization algorithm for solving the considered optimization problem. Simulation results proved that WOA has the most promising performance over other techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, a hybrid algorithm called a Gradient Artificial Hummingbird Algorithm (GAHA) is developed for reducing energy cost (EC) of microgrid system; this hybrid approach is based on the combination between Gradient based optimizer (GBO) and Artificial Hummingbird Algorithm (AHA). This proposed GAHA is firstly tested on a group of 23 benchmark test functions, and its obtained results are compared with five well-known algorithms including supply-demand-based optimization (SDO), wild horse optimizer (WHO), grey wolf optimizer (GWO), tunicate swarm algorithm (TSA) and original AHA algorithm. The obtained results using the GAHA algorithm show better performance in most cases and comparative results in other cases. Moreover, the developed GAHA algorithm is applied to obtain the optimal configuration of an isolated hybrid system, which is consists of photovoltaic (PV) modules, wind turbine (WT), biomass system, and battery storage system. The proposed standalone hybrid system is implemented for feeding loads in the new Tiba city, in northeast of Luxor in southern Egypt. GAHA technology is applied to four different system configurations to obtain the optimal system design. The GAHA optimization findings are compared with the findings from other optimization algorithms namely the original AHA, Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA), and whale optimization algorithm (WOA) methods. The GAHA method achieved the best results for all the suggested configuration scenarios compared to the rest of the algorithms used. • Hybrid algorithm called a Gradient Artificial Hummingbird Algorithm. • For reducing energy cost of microgrid system. • Optimal configuration of an isolated hybrid system. • The proposed method achieved the best results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to experimentally improve the overall efficiency of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels by coating them with hydrophobic SiO2 nanomaterial. Also, an accurate mathematical model was used to estimate the parameters of the PV panel, which is a non-linear optimization problem. Based on the experimental data and using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, the optimal five parameters of a single diode model of a PV panel were determined in this study. This experimental work was conducted and carried out in the Renewable Energy Laboratory of Assiut University, Egypt. A comparative analysis was completed for three identical solar PV panels; the first panel was coated with hydrophobic SiO2 nanomaterial, so it was considered to be a self-cleaning panel; the second panel was uncoated and cleaned manually on a daily basis; and the third panel was kept dusty all the time through the experimental investigation, and was used as a reference. Experimentally, the output power of the PV panels was monitored for each panel in this study. Also, the anti-static and anti-reflection effects of coating solar PV panels with hydrophobic SiO2 nanomaterial were investigated experimentally. According to the obtained experimental results, it was found that the use of SiO2 coating for PV panels results in the better performance of the PV panels. The overall efficiency of the coated panel increased by 15% and 5%, compared to the dusty panel and the uncoated panel which was manually cleaned daily, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]