Optimization of floating PV systems : Case study for a shrimp farm in Thailand

Sammanfattning: The use of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems have expanded rapidly the last decade and today’s market includes several different solar utilizations, where floating PV is one of them. Previous studies have shown how floating PV systems increase the PV efficiency and at the same time reduce the water evaporation. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and optimize energy solutions using floating PV systems for a shrimp farm cultivation in Thailand, where the technical, environmental and economic aspects will be included. The optimizations have been done in the open source model OptiCE, where genetic algorithm (AG) have been used to maximize the renewable reliability and minimize the Levelized Costs of Electricity (LCOE). In order to find the optimal renewable solution for the investigated shrimp farm, four scenarios have been compared considering different PV system combinations. The simulated results showed how the scenarios considering floating PV system generated a higher reliability than the scenarios considering ground-mounted PV system. The scenario considered tracking PV system increased the system´s renewable reliability compared to fixed PV system. However the shrimp farm is connected to the national electric grid or not will have a huge impact on the LCOE due to the low electric price and the implemented feed-in-tariff (FIT) program. The size of the installed PV capacity significantly affects the reliability results were the capacity of 200 kWp reaches a reliability of almost 100%. The optimal solution for the investigated shrimp farm to become independent is therefore to install a combined floating PV and battery storage system.