Field Implementation of "Smart Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage and Utilization"

(From left) Prof. Ching-ping Wong, Dean of Engineering, CUHK; Prof. Dah-ming Chiu, Emeritus Professor, Department of Information Engineering; Prof. Minghua Chen, Associate Professor, Department of Information Engineering; and Prof. Yeung Yam, Associate Master, Lee Woo Sing College. Recently, the various achievements of the team were integrated into field application strategies, based at the Lee Woo Sing College, for validating the performance of the renewable energy system.

The Lee Woo Sing (LWS) College is committed to green management and education, and is the leading green College in CUHK. Being a pioneer of implementing green technologies on a university campus,  they invented and installed a number of first-in-Hong Kong energy saving and renewable energy systems. Since mid-2016, the project collaborated with the LWS College of CUHK by establishing a field demo at the north and south rooftop of student hostel. The installation validated the performance of the renewable energy system  derived from the project:

• A total of 396 pieces of CIGS solar panels were installed (Around HKD 300,000), funded by TRS. Peak capacity reaches 35 kwp. 
• The College invested another HKD 1,300,000 for the mounting hardware and electrical work of the solar panels. 
• During May – Aug 2017, 13,600 kWh of electricity was generated (North block 9,360 and South block 4,240), equivalent to around HKD 15,400.
• Hence, the system is expected to save around HKD 40,000 electricity fee per year.
• This amount is around 2.4% of the total power consumption (570,000 kWh) of the entire College.

LWS College actively invested in smart buildings since its establishment in 2007. They installed individual smart meters in all 300 dormitory rooms, as well as monitoring system in VRV air-conditioning systems and hot water systems in public areas to measure all electricity consumption data digitally. In 2012, the first batch of students started to live in the College and used the smartmemter monitoring system, but no research work has been done that time. Since the kick start of the TRS project "Smart Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage and Utilization", the research team helped build a smart online energy management platform “Woo Sing Power”since 2015, which provides instantaneous feedback to each room, raises the awareness in the students of energy consumption and conservation and assists administrators to find opportunities and policies to save energy. Users are able to know their usage pattern compared to others which encourages good behavior towards energy conservation and carbon footprint reduction.

In the future the project is going to further explore even more breakthroughs, with the ultimate goal of integrating diversified systems for high-performing smart microgrids.