DESIGN OF A SOLAR ENERGY POWERED SYSTEM FOR OFFICE COMPLEX: A CASE STUDY OF NIGERIA SOCIETY OF ENGINEERS (NSE) GRANUM MANSION, AKURE

Abstract

The advent of industrialization in the 19th century has done lots of damages to our immediate natural environment by the combustion of fossil fuel and other unhealthy activities carried out by man, these on a long term have resulted into environmental challenges like ozone layer depletion, greenhouse effect leading to global warming, acid rain, pollution, hydrocarbon emissions etc. with time, it was also realised that buildings account for more than 40% of these emission and also consumes over 50% of energy generated through these emissions, hence the invention of Green Buildings which are regarded as environmentally friendly buildings and widely accepted as one of the ways out of the emissions and energy consumption by buildings. This study presents the design of a solar powered office complex (the Nigerian Society of Engineers’ Granum Mansion, Akure) with a sufficient off grid green energy source. The building’s appliance load was estimated using ASHRAE floor area method of preliminary load estimation which involves dividing the building into sections and applying simultaneity factor for power and lighting to their demand figures in order to determine the floor power of each sections of the building and hence the total building load. Murphy’s rule was also applied, this rule assumes that all installed appliances are working simultaneously and multiplied by a load factor. A total of 10 kW load was arrived at, and a suitable controlled solar powered system was designed for the estimated load. It was discovered that a 12.5 kW inverter system containing 183 units of 24 V; 250W solar panels, 98 units of 200Ah 24 V batteries, 30 units of 60 A solar charge controllers will be suitable for uninterrupted supply of power to the building and also to ensure an autonomy of 2 days without sunlight, the calculations were simulated using Matlab Simulink. From the results obtained, it can be said that better energy saving appliances should be adopted in the building with occupant behaviour regulated