Project
Case, energy-efficient holiday home
We got a holiday home in the area of Eindhoven. We are going to spend the first weekend of April till November there with a family of four. The little house has either ground area as a roof surface of 30 m2 and a height of 2.5 meters. Furthermore, the house contains a boiler for additional heating with an efficiency of 80 %. The little house is equipped with solar cells and solar collectors for which the entire roof surface is available.
We got in a refrigerator, seven lamps, and a radio which works on electricity. While we are visiting we bring our laptop, two mobile phones with chargers. The environment in the house has to be at 20 degrees celsius for a pleasant stay. For additional heat, we are allowed to use gas bottles of propane, 10.5 kg. In addition, the family take showers every day, 40 litres per person.
The house has to be energy-efficient and therefore the following U-values are applied:
U_roof = U_floor = U_wall = 0.5 [W/m2K]
U_glass = 3 [W/m2K]
Use the following programmes:
Matlab and Simulink and answer the following questions:
a) Calculate the electrical consumption of the holiday house in April – November.
b) Calculate the heat consumption in April – November.
The roof is equipped with a 4m2 solar collector (flat plate); the rest is available for solar cells (own choice). The need for electricity must be fully covered by the solar cells because the house is not connected to the electricity grid.
c) Calculate the battery capacity assuming that electricity produced for a week is to be stored.
d) How much roof surface do you need for the solar cells?
e) What percentage of the heat consumption is covered by the solar collector?
f) How many gas bottles should be used in this period?
g) What is the ideal distribution of surface solar cell: surface solar collector to have the lowest possible gas consumption?
We collected data from the Dutch meteorological institute (KMNI) in Eindhoven so that we can calculate how much energy the solar cells have generated.
This case focuses on using the programmes such as Matlab and Simulink. This course was given in the second semester of the major Mechanical Engineering and I got a 9 out of 10. This course called Modelling and Simulation and I enjoyed it very much.