Techno-Economic Performance Evaluation for Olive Mills Powered by Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Systems

In recent years, due to the rise in petroleum prices and greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy has been recommended as a power source for different types of facilities. For the period 2010 to 2020 the European Commission has established three key objectives related to climatic change and energy...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energies (Basel) 2015-10, Vol.8 (10), p.11939-11954
Main Authors: Rabaza, Ovidio, Contreras-Montes, Jose, Garcia-Ruiz, Maria Jesus, Delgado-Ramos, Fernando, Gomez-Lorente, Daniel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Energy management
Energy use
HOMER software
Mills
net metering
olive mill
Olive oil
Olives
Performance evaluation
photovoltaic
Reduction
Renewable energy
self-consumption
Solar cells
sustainability
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In recent years, due to the rise in petroleum prices and greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy has been recommended as a power source for different types of facilities. For the period 2010 to 2020 the European Commission has established three key objectives related to climatic change and energy sustainability, such as reductions of CO2 emissions, increases in the use of renewable energy, and improvements in energy efficiency. A key industry is olive oil production in olive mills, where there is a great opportunity to reduce electricity consumption, increase additional profits related to the reduction of technologies that are harmful to the environment, and to cut back maintenance costs. For this reason, a feasibility study of grid-connected photovoltaics (PV) systems has been carried out for different types of olive mills in Andalusia (southern Spain). This region is highly energy dependent, but has an abundance of "green" resources to be exploited. The results of this study contemplate a reduction in spending on electrical power of between 2% and 37%, and an increase in the use of renewable energy of between 2% and 26%. These results are according to the self-consumption or net metering policy and the production capacity of olive oil.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en81011939