MSG: Combined project on multi-user solar hybrid grids

• Forschungsstelle: EU FRP
• Projektnummer: 99.0494
• Projekttitel Englisch: MSG: Combined project on multi-user solar hybrid grids

Schlüsselwörter (Englisch)

Solarenergie; Computersimulation; community management

Alternative Projektnummern (Englisch)

EU project number: NNE5/1999/483

Forschungsprogramme (Englisch)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 1.4b.1 Cleaner energy systems, including renewables

Kurzbeschreibung (Englisch)

See abstract

Partner und Internationale Organisationen (Englisch)

Fraunhofer ISE (D), Trama TecnoAmbiental (E), Instituto Nacional de Engenharia e Tecnologia Industrial (P), Institut Català d'Energia (E), Vergnet SA (F), Fundacion Empresa Universidad Gallega (E), Asociacion Servicios Energeticos Basicos Autonomos (E), University of Vigo (E)

Abstract (Englisch)

The University of Zurich is one (of 9) Partner in a Project in the EU Programme 'Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development,' Key Action 5: cleaner energy systems, including renewable energies. The project leader is Sebastian Will from Fraunhofer ISE in Freiburg i.Br. (Germany). The task of the team of the University of Zurich (Departement of Psychology, Division of Social Psychology) is to develop social strategies to introduce and manage MSGs (multi-user solar hybrid grids). The objective is to develop new social means to overcome the existing problems in using a multi-user solar hybrid grid with different renewable energy sources in a sustainable and environmentally friendly, resource saving way. This means, on one hand, to improve the knowledge about the users of hybrid systems and their consumption behaviour as well as the knowledge about their environmental consciousness and their social cohesion and on the other hand to overcome some of the social problems related to the fair distribution of electricity and its use in the time where 'renewable energy' is available and the others do not use it. An important subtask is the development of a social simulation tool for MSGs. This includes to develop and apply a social computer model of human resource use to the case of the common use of the limited resource 'electricity from renewable energies'. Standardised data will be taken from the investigated villages for characterising the social structure and energy use behavior of different villages. Criteria will be found to design an optimal energy use behaviour and social strategies will be worked out how to reach this behavior. The target is to give the users limits as much as necessary and as less as possible to use the renewable energy as efficient as possible.
Experience has shown that major social and technical problems can arise under certain conditions when a rural (developing country) community is provided with electrical energy by a stand-alone pv-system that has its limits on the energy provision. The technical systems on the one hand need improvements in components, design and installation. The human communities on the other hand need improvements in operation, knowledge, acceptance of limits, behavioral adaptations and in social organization around the new technology. As the community and the pv-system interact in many ways it's useless to focus only on one of them when improvements should be made. Therefore we propose a new computer simulation approach that takes into account the technical problems as well as the social ones.
In this approach a technical pv-model (built at INETI, Lisbon) provides information about the system's status and a social model of human resource use (built at the University of Zurich) provides information about the user behavior. The combined model will be fed with two kinds of data: synthetic meteorological data for characterising the climate at a specific site and real social data from face to face interviews in Spanish pv-communities for characterising the human community using the system. By simulating different scenarios on the computer improvement measures can be tested in silico without the need of much money or manpower. Different kinds of system-designs can be tested in different kind of communities. If the socio-technical simulation approach succeeds it will improve the performance (including costs) and the durability of a planned pv-system and more important the satisfaction of the people using it.
In 2002 the socio-technical simulation tool has been completed as executable computer software. A graphical user interface has been implemented that allows an easier handling of the tool. Besides the technical improvement of the simulation data have been collected on Cuba and in Argentina. These data consist of a) socio-demographic data of households b) social psychological data of households c) hourly and monthly measures of energy usage of households and d) technical data of the pv-system. This body of data makes it possible for the first time to completely simulate a MSG community. The first village that has been simulated for parameter estimation is Santa Maria de el Loreto in the south of Cuba. First results show that the simulation tool is able to reproduce and explain the actual use behavior of the villagers.

Datenbankreferenzen (Englisch)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 99.0494