Design and Optimization of Solar Powered Micro-Refrigerator at Dire Dawa Shinile
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Date
2017-10
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Publisher
AAU
Abstract
Energy is one of the key factor for development of the country, and it can be gained from
different sources, but some of these sources are not environmentally friendly, expensive and
difficult to transport; like fossil fuel. The best option to solve these problems is use solar energy,
wind energy and etc. Ethiopia has huge potential for solar energy because it is located
close to the equator. Refrigerator is one of the essential tools used in daily. Especially
refrigerator is very required for the people who live in desert area for cooling water. The people
living in grid connected system use electric powered refrigerator for cooling water, but people
living in desert off-grid area can't get electric powered refrigerator. Therefore this problem would
be solved when they use solar powered refrigerator. In this work Dire Dawa shinile is study
area of this thesis and it located at 9.68° latitude and 41.85° Longitude.
One of the major drawbacks of solar refrigerator technology has been the large battery systems
that were required to store the sun’s energy for use during the night and cloudy periods. These
batteries have a relatively short life time and replacements are expensive. In this work solar
power refrigerator optimization is eliminates the expensive energy storage batteries and use
ice storage tank instead of battery. PV sizing for solar powered refrigerator is depending on
power requirement of compressor by using PVsyst software. The Freeze water in ice storage
tank by using the sun's energy which operate compressor of refrigerator and then by using these
ice storage to cooling water drink, during solar energy couldn't drive compressor. The net
capacity of the refrigerator use for cooling water is 33L and an ice storage of 1kg, is able to
maintain 6 liter of water drink temperature below 5℃ as comfortable for drink. The initial cost
of solar powered refrigerator is 13,266birr and this cost would be obtain after one year. Solar
powered refrigerator system can be reliably used at where the local grid is not
continuously available where as refrigeration need is critical.
Description
Keywords
olar energy, photovoltaic (PV), cooling water, ice storage, pvsyst