Grid Connected PV System for an Academic Building of KFUPM Campus in Saudi Arabia

Rising living standards through smart and sustainable development is crucial to advancing human life and protecting the natural environment. The smart grid is an ideal opportunity to create efficient and sustainable solutions for closed communities. This is to provide them with a robust and resilient infrastructure. Because the smart grid is a large system that can be developed in many forms, such as smart metering, sustainable power generation, demand response automation, and data management, each application can be developed independently and contribute to increasing the value of efficient and sustainable factors. This paper studies alternative power supplies for supplying an academic building in the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) Campus of Saudi Arabia. The extra power was sold to the electricity company and shared with the grid to reduce consumer bills. A small-scale PV system is modeled and analyzed using HOMER software for community purposes. A simulation-based model has been developed to optimize local power supply and demand for residential communities. Using HOMER, an economic analysis has been conducted and possible alternatives suggested based on the electricity consumption. According to the simulation results, the buildings' electricity supply could be generated most effectively by installing a PV power system on the roof. Though the total net present cost (NPC) and cost of energy (COE) of the system with PV is slightly larger than grid only system, it can be recommended by considering the ongoing increasing energy prices and nonrenewable energy sources. Keywords. Grid-connected; Photovoltaic System; Energy Sustainability; HOMER.