Rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems for industrial halls: Achieving economic benefit via lowering energy demand

Industrial halls are characterized with their relatively high roof-to-floor ratio, which facilitates ready deployment of renewable energy generation, such as photovoltaic (PV) systems, on the rooftop. To promote deployment of renewable energy generation, feed-in tariff (FIT) higher than the electricity rate is available in many countries to subsidize the capital investment. FIT comes in different forms. For net FIT, in order to maximize the economic benefit, surplus electricity generation at each of the hour is desirable. One way to achieve surplus electricity generation is by increasing generation capacity, which is synonymous to higher capital investment. In fact, surplus electricity generation can also be achieved by lowering the energy demand of the building. That is particularly the case for industrial halls, which are usually subject to high energy demand for space conditioning in order to remove the excess heat gain due to the many power-intensive processes. Building energy performance simulation tools can be used to explore the different building design options that could lower the energy demand. In this paper, single-objective optimization on investment return will be deployed to study the cost effectiveness among different options in lowering energy demand. It will be demonstrated with a case study of a warehouse.