Shams

https://youtu.be/8PkJb3T8djs

https://github.com/6ami/space_app_solar

PROBLEM

Nowadays, generating electricity from alternative sources is one of the aims of many countries. Among these alternatives, photovoltaic solar panels occupy the top aimed sources with efficiencies reaching 30% [1]. Figure 1, and figure 2 shows the growth in the installed solar photovoltaic power globally and per leading countries in their continents, respectively [2]. Overall, some efforts have been made toward making the needful parameters free and available for public (like the Sun irradiance, temperature, Humidity, etc.). NASA POWER [3], JASMES [4], and JAXA [5] are all an example of these efforts for providing raw data. However, the distribution and the difficulty to obtain the information makes the experience exhausting. In addition, solar photovoltaic require considerably a solid understanding of electrical terms and electricity in general. Hence, this issue limits the residential and household people of benefiting and keep tracking the global growth. Therefore, the complexity and the distributed resources make the research about information is very exhausting. Also, the general complexity of the topic and the many related parameters to be obtained from different resources are some of the challenges that arises. In this work, all the needful information will to be gathered in one platform to ease the user experience. Moreover, the platform will provide technical support for the costumer to size and select the PV system and its components (Inverter, Battery, etc.) among different options. Prices, datasheets and more are all in the user hand in one click.

Figure 1: Growth in installed solar photovoltaic power world widely

Figure 2: Growth in installed solar photovoltaic power in leading countries of their Continent

SOLUTION

The mother earth's resources have been depleted for centuries and would continue if we don't stand out for our beloved nature, first by solving the most challenging issue.. Energy 

Shams app is key enabler for deploying renewable energy and an opportunity for individuals to hold their full environmental responsibility through two services:

1. Data Visualization

In this service, we are providing to the user the best and easiest way to visualize NASA data. The user can easily scale graphs from hourly, daily, weekly, monthly until yearly of the selected or current location. In Shams application, the users are going to have the accessibility to main daily parameters that are needed in our life which are visible solar Irradiance, optimal solar Irradiance (for Photovoltaic Cells), temperature, speed of wind, surface pressure and humidity percentage

2. Advanced Method in Solar Panel Selection

In Shams application, we are going to assist and guide the user step by step in how to select the needed solar system. This is our aim that we believe it will serve to help householder to generate electricity in clean ways instead of the conventional harmful ones. From the NASA optimal solar Irradiance, we provide to the user the average annual solar irradiance, and we assist him/her to calculate the consumed power by selecting the needed powered devices. Then, from our supplier data bank we suggest the optimal solar system (solar panel, inverter and battery). In addition, we provide the needed area to install the solar system, number of solar panels and estimated price. The following equations are used in sizing the complete PV system (including PV panels, Batteries, Inverters):

Figure 3: PV Power System Equations

Where Wp_total is the total required power of the PV system at STC (standard test conditions), L is the consumed Load obtained from the user, h_DW is the total working hours in a day. h_S is the assumed available sun hours, dh1 is the derating factors. A_total is the total area required of PV panels for the whole system. Eff is the efficiency of a certain PV model. IR is the sun irradiance obtained from NASA POWER based on a specific location. dh2 is the derating factors related to temperature, humidity, etc. obtained from NASA POWER. NPV is the total number of PV panels in the system. Ap is the panel area of a specific model. Moreover, TB_size is the total battery size required for the system. V_DC is the DC system voltage, D is the number of days of autonomy required, and dh_g is the aging factor. Finally, the Inverter is sized according to the total required power of the system. The selection is based on the most economical solution. 

DEMO

In this section we are going to explain the working demonstration in details layer by layer.

Figure 4: Illustrating Overall Map

Figure 5: Showing Live and Selected Location

Figure 6: Showing the page of data visualization of all the main NASA POWER Renewable Energy Parameters

Figure 7: Showing the main selections that the user should be used in order to calculate the estimated consumed power

Figure 8: Showing the optimal selected area, cost, and number of panels best on the best price and efficiency relation

Figure 9: Showing Shams Application on different software systems (IOS/Android/Windows)

At the end of the demonstration, we would like to say that the project is efficiently working on Smart Phones (IOS/Android) and Website. Moreover, the system built on approved mathematical equations in order to facilitate getting the main solar power system based on the solar irradiance data from the approved NASA POWER Software

Team Members

Our team consists of three engineers and developers:

• Khaled is an industrial engineer and works as a management consultant mainly in building national strategies, business development, and technology transformation. Khaled worked on multiple projects; developing an AI-driven system to monitor and inspect PV panels via autonomous UAV (i.e., drone) for a smart city, and an optimized public transportation routing using machine learning that utilizes 600k+ data points of pick-up and drop-off locations of residents in one of Saudi's major cities.
• Sharif is a mechanical engineer and works as product designer mainly in oil & gas, healthcare, and entreponureship. Sharif worked on developing and building many products including; air sanitizer, touchless products sanitizer, an innovative well drilling machine, and a self driving motorcycle. 
• Obada is an electrical engineer and holds a electrical engineering master's. Obada works in measuring and estimating light lumens for mega-projects in Riyadh. Obada worked on multiple projects; developing an AI-driven system to monitor and inspect PV panels via autonomous UAV (i.e., drone) for a smart city.
• Tami is mobile phone application developer on both environments, IOS/Android. Tami has 6 years of experience as a developer in a company that serves a global oil corporate

Future Development

• Enhance the data fetching from NASA Power website to minimize the loading time
• Design a UX/UI for the app and website
• Launch the applications on Google play and App store
• We are planning to include more services that includes:

Adding more devices so the user can choose his devices to estimate an accurate amount of needed power to fully feed his house/facility.

Exploring near PV-system retailers for the user to easily compare prices and eventfully buy a PV system.

Also, In order to have a real data time comparison between NASA POWER data and the absorbed visible solar irradiance from the installed power system, we are going to add another page to measure the solar irradiance from produced power connected with an IoT power meter so we can cloudy connect the real time data with the application.

Utilizing NASA data is one of the goals of building the project and solve the challenge. Based on the challenge of “You Are My Sunshine”, NASA POWER (which stands for Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources) is the optimal software which has enormous amount of useful and organized dataset specially in renewable energy major.

In the project, we have used the following renewable energy dataset (the link for all the data set is https://power.larc.nasa.gov/data-access-viewer/) through connecting them to our main code by API, which are as the following:

1. All Sky Surface Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) Total – to visualize the data of the visible solar irradiance at the selected location with scalable time resolutions in daily use in watt per square meter (W/m2).

2. Temperature at 2 Meters – to visualize the data of temperature at the selected location with scalable time resolutions in daily use in Celsius degree (c).

3. Relative Humidity at 2 Meters – to visualize the data of humidity at the selected location with scalable time resolutions in daily use in (%).

4. Surface Pressure – to visualize the data of pressure at the selected location with scalable time resolutions in daily use in Kilo Pascal (KPa).

5. Wind Speed at 10 Meters – to visualize the data of wind speed at the selected location with scalable time resolutions in daily use in meter per second (m/s).

6. Solar Irradiance for Equator Facing Tilted Surfaces (Set of Surfaces) - to visualize the data of optimal solar irradiance at the selected location with scalable time resolutions at monthly use in watt per square meter (W/m2) and to predict the annual average of optimal solar irradiance in order to calculate the needed area to build the solar system, needed number of solar panels and suggest the optimal solar system that can fit with optimized price.

The journey started when I first saw the announcement of Space App competition. I said then, I am a consultant and I barley find the time for my family rather than participating in a competition, then I remembered the last time I participated in one of national competitions and how challenges made me excited and eager to optimize my time and count every step with a high level of adrenaline increases every second I and my team become closer to the deadline. 

I reminded myself of how an idea from a Hackaton can really make an impact and how much we as a society should be committed to our environment and hold the responsibility to do our best to make this happens especially if this competition is hosted by NASA where the project will get the sufficient exposure and would come real one day. 

That being said, I called my old friends and previous teammates, they agreed directly and made me even more excited, that was on the last day of registration. Yet, they are in another city and we used to hangout together in a coffee shop and discuss our projects but not on a Zoom call ! 

We got ourselves together and started exploring the challenges and find what project would make the fastest impact if it becomes real, directly we decided to choose the closest topic to our hearts as engineers, solar energy. 

After long debate if we should aim for the global competition or not, I said: “ if you want to aim towards something, make it the moon or even beyond” and we literally aim beyond, to the sun ! Then we chose the challenge, prepared a quick intro video as we needed a programmer because we don’t have the needed skills to develop an IOS/Android app, after only one hour, my teammate started shouting “WE GOT THE APP DEVELOPER!”. We jumped on a call immediately and discussed the way forward. 

It was simple plan, to start working now. Each one of the team picked a topic, module, or deliverable and we started hearing the keyboards clattering. And here I am “clattering” on my keyboard to tell everybody the Shams team’s story (the sun team).

In this project, we used several resources depends on the need of building the solution

External

[1] S. Vergura, "Correct Settings of a Joint Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Infrared Camera System for the Detection of Faulty Photovoltaic Modules," in IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 124-130, Jan. 2021, doi: 10.1109/JPHOTOV.2020.3033777.

[2] IRENA (2021), Renewable capacity statistics 2021 International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Abu Dhabi.

NASA and its Partners

[3] NASA POWER, (10, 2021), “The Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER)”

retrieved online “https://power.larc.nasa.gov/”

[4] JASMES, (10, 2021), “JAXA Satellite Monitoring for Environmental Studies”

retrieved online “https://kuroshio.eorc.jaxa.jp/JASMES/index.html”

[5] JAXA, (10, 2021), “JAXA Himwari Monitor”

retrieved online “https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ptree/index.html” 

[6]NASA POWER, (10, 2021), “Application Programming Interfaces (API)”

retrieved online “https://power.larc.nasa.gov/docs/services/api”

[7]NASA POWER, (10, 2021), “Application Programming Interfaces (API)”

retrieved online “https://power.larc.nasa.gov/docs/tutorials/api-getting-started/”

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This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.