Promotion of Trombe wall through demand-side management

Abstract

The present paper explores the feasibility of developing a demand-side management (DSM) strategy with the purpose of making advantage of the shifted solar energy use of Trombe wall (TW) systems to the evening hours while both the electric utility and its customers enjoy economic benefits. In many countries the winter peak hours coincide with the early evening hours and therefore replacing the electric heaters with TW systems during these hours would facilitate the peak clipping strategy in DSM. The aim of the current work is to offer means of overcoming the difficulties concerned with the implementation of such a DSM program and developing a comprehensive method to determine whether the outlined DSM program can be economically justifiable. The proposed method is examined under the North Cyprus (NC) conditions. According to the simulations performed for a 35 m(2) room, integrated with a TW, an estimated 355.35 kWh of electricity is saved in each house participating in the program during the peak hours in winter. A peak clipping of 17.5-MW is expected to be achieved with 6842 houses. If a rebate of 1588.25 EUR is invested by the utility per house, a net present value of 5,031,514 EUR is estimated over a life time of 20 years. The life cycle cost indicators under different conditions and risks that might befall during the project implementation are also investigated. In all considered possibilities the savings-to-investment ratio of the DSM program is greater than 1.0, implying that there is economic feasibility.