1. System Design Summary
1.1 SYSTEM DESIGN APPROACH
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To begin our design process for Nebraska’s East Campus, we analyzed irradiance profiles of each of the candidate buildings on the East Campus as well as the agricultural field to the east of the university. The buildings were first modeled using Google Maps and Lidar data available within Aurora Solar software. Upon completion of each building layout design, Aurora’s irradiance tool was used to generate a profile based on building height, shape, and presence of obstructions and trees.
To consolidate our profiles and aid the process of selecting the buildings to be used for a solar solution, we combined the usable area of each building roof with its annual solar access in our master Excel workbook to make a more informed decision about which buildings to use. Table 1.1 shows the roof area used and annual solar access for each of the final 12 buildings that were selected for solar solutions. Section 3 includes the final designs and irradiance profiles for each building. See Section 3.2. for the East Campus building designs.
When designing in Aurora, we made sure to include walkways on each of the roofs in accordance with the International Fire Code Article 605.11. A 3-foot walkway was incorporated into each design as necessary, ensuring a 3-foot clearance from each roof’s edge to comply with the code’s standards [1]. These codes are in place to allow for firefighters to gain access to the roof in the case of an emergency.
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Adjacent to the East Campus, UNL has an agricultural field where various crops are grown for research. Certain areas of this field are optimal locations to place ground-mounted solar arrays. We decided to design 55 ground-mounts on the grassy southwest section of the agricultural field. See Section 3.2. for the Agricultural Field design.
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On Nebraska’s City Campus, the university is interested in installing PV systems that will “show off” their commitment to green energy on campus. With the bulk of our design’s offset coming from the East Campus system, we modeled a PV device on City Campus that will stand out and be an interactive for the public. There are a few interesting systems on the market such as solar trees and solar flowers that serve the practical purpose of generating energy while adding to the aesthetics of the desired system placement. We chose to model Smartflower’s Solar Flower product in front of the City Campus’ Love library, a central location that will be visited by many each day. Figure 1.1 depicts the Smartflower with all its “petals” open. This system tracks the sun and is self-cleaning, two desirable features that helped in the selection process. When modeling this solar array in Aurora, we elected to include each “petal” as a separate customized ground-mount panel module. The three groups represent Panel/Petal 1, Panels 2-11, and Panel 12 because these groups have varying solar specs according to the manufacturer and distributor [2] [3]. See Section 3.3. for the City Campus design.
