Viability of Trombe Wall Promotion through Utility Demand-Side Management

The present study 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 three different case studies including North Cyprus (NC), Erbil, and San Diego for single and two storey buildings. According to the simulations performed in Design Buildersoftware (Eastern Mediterranean University license 2019-2021); in the case of single storey building, for a 35 m2 room, integrated with a TW, an estimated 11.2, 12.48, and 4.37 kWhe/m2 is saved for NC, Erbil, and San Diego, respectively in each house participating in the program during the peak hours in winter. On the other hand, in the case of two storey building 9.22, 10.77, and, 3.03 kWhe/m2 is saved for NC, Erbil, and San Diego, respectively. A peak clipping of 17.5-MW is targeted in all programs to be achieved with the participation of 6842 houses in a DSM program. The utility rebates estimated per house are 1588.25, 1058.75, and 2543.9 EUR for the cases of NC, Erbil and San Diego respectively. The net present values (NPVs) for applying such a DSM program for single-storey buildings over a life-time of 20 years in NC, Erbil and San Diego are estimated to be 4,824,090, 29,597,585 and 1,575,901 EUR respectively. In the case of two-storey buildings, the NPVs are slightly different; for NC, Erbil and San Diego the NPVs are computed to be 4,866,525, 29,502,686, and 3,608,460 EUR, respectively. 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 for the case of NC and Erbil is greater than 1.0, implying that TW implementation is economically feasible in these locations. However, in the case of San Diego the economic viability of the proposed DSM program under unforeseen conditions is under risk, implying that its implementation should be carried out with utmost carefulness.