Development and analysis of a solar‐based offshore energy system for sustainable island communities

In this study, a solar-based integrated system is designed and analyzed thermodynamically using the first- and second-law approaches. The sustainable energy island concept is developed to meet the energy and commodity demands of emerging countries in a sustainable manner. The proposed system utilizes an energy island concept where solar energy is the main source and provides electricity, freshwater, and hydrogen by integrating a floating photovoltaic system, a parabolic through collector system, the Cu-Cl cycle, a multi-effect desalination unit, and a fuel cell unit in a sustainable fashion. The hydrogen-based system is used to store energy in the chemical form to compensate for the time when the solar radiation is not available. A transient analysis is carried out to realistically determine the performance of the proposed system in a case study where Northern Cyprus is considered with its annual electricity demand. The proposed system averagely achieves an overall energy efficiency of 14.06% and an overall exergy efficiency of 14.61% while producing a total of 7.1 ton/h of hydrogen, a total of 115.4 ton/h of freshwater, and a total of 362.4 MWp of electricity, respectively.