Design and Performance Evaluation of a Photovoltaic Greenhouse as an Energy Hub with Battery Storage and an Electric Vehicle Charger

Abstract

This work presents a photovoltaic greenhouse’s design and performance evaluation as an energy hub in modern agriculture that integrates battery energy storage, an electric vehicle charging station, and non-controlled loads. The greenhouse roof comprises 48 semi-transparent photovoltaic panels with nominal transparency of 20% and 110 W capacity. The control of the photovoltaic greenhouse as an energy hub was approached as an optimization problem with the aim of minimizing the energy purchased from the grid. The simulation results indicate that the system is capable of balancing power transactions within the microgrid, thus enabling electromobility and, at the same time, achieving an average energy saving of up to 41%. Furthermore, it was found that the case of slow charging of the electric vehicle at night was less demanding on the battery system than fast charging during the day in terms of abrupt power transitions and average state of charge of the battery system, 61% vs. 53%, respectively. Empirical results also demonstrated the negative impact of soiling generated by agricultural activity on the performance of solar panels. For a period analyzed of three years, an average annual production loss of 6.8% was calculated.