Expression of Interest: Renewable Energy Project in Cooma

This project presents a student's expression of interest in renewable energy technologies, focusing on a zero-energy building design in Cooma, Australia. The study begins with a background on the global shift towards renewable energy, highlighting Australia's potential and current advancements in solar and wind energy. The research delves into the motivations for adopting renewable energy, including environmental impacts, cost-effectiveness, and governmental policies. It outlines research questions addressing the reduction of non-renewable energy use, incorporation of renewable technologies, and strategies for energy efficiency. The project's objectives include maximizing the use of available data, identifying renewable energy technologies, and examining their application within grid systems. The proposed design involves a zero-energy building with qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, utilizing optimization tools like MATLAB. The project explores primary energy considerations, including energy audits, smart technology integration, and renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and biomass. The report is structured into chapters covering the executive summary, introduction, background, methodology, literature review, analysis, and conclusion, with references and a research schedule provided. The student aims to develop a practical and effective solution to the challenges of renewable energy implementation. The assignment also references the context of the assignment brief, which is for the student to submit an expression of interest for an Engineering Project I, supervised by Dr. Mobarak Hossain, addressing the design of a zero-energy building.

Expression of Interest Research 1
AN EXPRESSION OF INTEREST IN RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES IN
COOMA CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
Name of student
Institution
Date

Expression of Interest Research 2
Background of the study
Currently, there is a global trend towards the energy structure, which is attempting to promote
more green and renewable energy. The development of renewable energy has evolved to become
an inevitable topic in most of the conferences and within the research institutes. It implies that a
low carbon economy and green economy will be the norm in most parts of the globe. Taking
Australia s an instance; it has experienced significant changes over the last few years (Adapa et
al., 2016). For instance; the pipeline for new solar and wind PV systems is approximately 63
gigawatts annually. This is translated to 250 watts for every person which is far less than the
European Union, USA, china and japan which is 50 watts per individual. Renewable energy is
sustainable and it is approximated that by 204 and 2032, adoption of renewable energy will be at
maximum, 100%. The diagram below depicts the annual renewable energy deployment of a
number of countries.
Fig.2: Annual Renewable Energy Deployment

Expression of Interest Research 3
Fig.2: Climatic Conditions of Cooma, NSW
From the first diagram above, it can be shown that Australia has great potential and have done
much towards ensuring that renewable energy technologies are fully installed within its grid
system. The second diagram, gives a the climatic data for COOMA, the town in which the
design study is to be conducted, for the construction of a zero-energy building.
In 2017 alone, 68% of the global net new capacity additions were accounted for by the wind
(20%), solar (39%), as well as hydro (9%). The recent market shifts have demonstrated that there
are major trends which will have a great impact on the Australian economy in terms of its energy
mix. For instance, AEMO has predicted that the installation of the rooftop of PVS will go up by
350%, which approximately contributes to 11% if the NEM energy requirements. Further, the
forecasted PV electricity will account for further flattening to close to zero within the supplied
energy (Dada and Mbohwa, 2018).
With the increased demands for renewable energy technologies as well as the reduction of fossil
fuels, there is a need for providing a methodological approach which optimally maximizes the
energy which is being utilized. There are several possible solutions, beginning with adopting
renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hydro energy. Additionally, there are
sustainable measures which can be applied in promoting renewable energy technologies.

Expression of Interest Research 4
Renewable energy is defined in this context as the production of a clean and sustainable form of
energy which does not result into the emission of carbon oxide into the atmosphere, and hence,
reduce the climatic efforts such as global warming (Gandhi and Jupp, 2014).
Research motivation
In the past, coal, natural gas, petroleum as well as other fossil fuels have been the leading sources
of energy across the world. However, there has been interest in developing other sources of
energy with the increased demand for energy as well as the resulting decrease in fossil fuels. To
realize this research, some of the motivations which promote the research into fully investing in
renewable energy includes
 Environmental impacts: a great percentage of greenhouse emissions often results from
the combustion of fossil fuels
 Waste generation: a goof number of the fossil fuels power plants are associated with low
efficiency, often ranging from 32 to 36% thus resulting in a great deal of waste
generations
 Cost: to be able to extract the fossil fuels, it costs a lot of money and resources, and with
the limited supply, it could likely go up in the coming years as the amount of fossil keeps
on reducing
 Legislation: globally, twenty-seven states in total have passed a law which requires that
most of the electric utility companies have a certain portion of renewable energy in their
specific generation portfolios (Jonasson and Kandasamy, 2018).
 Political influence: most of the presidents have announced their intentions to decrease the
dependency on fossil fuels and thus invest more on renewable energy technologies
Research questions

Expression of Interest Research 5
To meet its objectives, this report focuses on providing solutions to the below research problems
I. How to reduce the use of non-renewable sources of energy and achieve a zero energy
building
II. How to incorporate renewable technologies of reducing the energy consumption
III. How to incorporate efficiency within the renewable sources of energy
IV. To determine the specific materials which promote renewable energy
Objectives
The main objective of this project is to implement a practical and effective solution to the
challenge of renewable energy
The specific objectives that will be pursued on this technical research are as follows:
 To ascertain that the available data concerning renewable energy can be maximally
utilized to adopt a fully renewable energy economy
 To determine the most reasonable assumptions on the systematic identification of
renewable energy technologies
 To examine the opportunity of applying renewable energy technologies within the gird
systems
Proposed design
Primarily, this study aims at designing a zero energy building with the capital city of Australia,
Canberra. To achieve the research outcome, both qualitative and quantitative research
methodologies will be applied, since there is need to first verify the operational efficiency
parameters of a zero energy building. There will be an imminent need to ensure that all data
relating to achieving a zero energy building is collated, including the various renewable energy
technologies for accomplishing maximum operating efficiency within the a building. There are

Expression of Interest Research 6
optimization tools such as MATLAB that will be used to verify all the available data so as to
ensure that a quantitative research is feasible. To offer the absolute feasibility of the project, the
researcher will put into consideration the primary energy in order to identify the opportunities,
and therefore offer detailed research on the renewable technologies aimed at achieving a zero
energy building.
Primary energy
 Conducting an energy audit as well as immediate repair of faulty devices.
 Installation of smart technology such as: variable refrigerant flow systems, programmable
thermostats, as well as motion detector sensors.
 Conducting a Preventative maintenance schedule which ensures peak operation
efficiency for the heating and heating systems
 Integrating energy-saving structural changes
Renewable energy
 Energy conservation in HVAC (improved insulation, heating, air conditioning)
 Improved fuel-efficient cars (Diesel, electro-hybrid systems)
 Sustainable and simple biomass --> biogas systems with entry into urban gas supply nets.
 Energy storage, particularly for wind energy (capacity: 1-2 weeks), but also for solar.
 Midterm (beginning 2020): (Kamp, 2018)
 Large scale marine power, including energy storage (for offshore wind parks)
 Biofuels from algae or lignocellulosic biomass. Critical: lignin conversion.
 Large scale solar: The main target is energy transport and economy of scale. Solar is the
electrical energy source of the longer-range future.

Expression of Interest Research 7
Proposed chapters
It is proposed that the report will be divided into the following chapters:
Executive Summary
Introduction
Background and Motivation of the Study
Aims and Objectives
Research questions and expected outcomes.
Research Methodology
Literature Review
Introduction
Renewable energy sources and technologies
Renewable energy and sustainable development
Challenges affecting renewable energy
Research Outcome
Analysis and Discussion
Conclusion and Recommendation
References
Appendix
Research study schedule

Expression of Interest Research 8
References
Adapa, S., Bhullar, N. and de Souza, S.V., 2016. A systematic review and agenda for using
alternative water sources for consumer markets in Australia. Journal of Cleaner Production, 124,
pp.14-20.
Dada, O. and Mbohwa, C., 2018. Energy from waste: A possible way of meeting goal 7 of the
sustainable development goals. Materials Today: Proceedings, 5(4), pp.10577-10584.
Gandhi, S. and Jupp, J., 2014. BIM and Australian green star building certification. In
Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (2014) (pp. 275-282).
Jonasson, O.J. and Kandasamy, J., 2018. Decentralised water reuse in Sydney, Australia: drivers
for implementation and energy consumption. Journal of Environmental Engineering and Science,
13(1), pp.2-7.
Kamp, J., 2018. Threat or Thrill: Rediscovering the Suburban Landscape, A Framework for
Visual Arts Research. Phil Fitzsimmons & Barbra McKenzie, p.63.
Kim, J.J., 2017. Economic analysis on energy saving technologies for complex manufacturing
building. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 123, pp.249-254.