New York Institute of Technology New York, New York Energy

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1 New York Institute of Technology New York, New York Energy FELLOW Prashant Tank Fellowship Year: 2009 Year in School: 2 nd Year Address: 1514, Moffett St. Suite C, Salinas CA Cell: ptank@nyit.edu SCHOOL The New York Institute of Technology has three campuses in the New York area. Located in the heart of midtown Manhattan, NYITs campus is home to approximately 3,000 students including full time, part time, graduate and undergraduate students. Comprising four buildings between West 60th and 61st Streets, the Manhattan campus is centrally located within walking distance of Lincoln Center and Central Park, easily accessible by subway and bus. The main building, 1855 Broadway, is approximately 160 ft high and contains facilities such as a library, computer lab, classrooms and architecture studios. ABSTRACT The project aimed to measure the useable solar radiation in a dense urban environment using the main building of the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) Manhattan campus. The work will encompass the digital archiving of the incident solar radiation impacting the building. The radiation will be measured using a solar pyrometer on the roof of the building. The shadows on the southern wall will be recorded using a digital camera. The data collected will be made available to the Schools of Engineering and Architecture for case study purposes. A novel aspect of the design project is the measurement of incident solar radiation while including the effects of shadows from other buildings and urban air quality. The measurements will be used to produce a solar model for use in designing options for utilization. GOALS AND OUTCOMES Goals Short-term goals: Generation of an actual data set of annual solar radiation on the rooftop. Obtain images of the shadows of adjacent buildings are they trace across the southern wall of NYIT s main building at 1855 Broadway. Generation of wind data set for the roof of 1855 Broadway. Long-term objectives to successfully enhance the sustainability practices on campus are: Incorporation of the data from the project into NYIT s educational program. The use of real world data will be used to enhance the student learning experience providing a level of detail not possible using only mathematical models or simulations (such as PV Watts).

2 Development of a novel measurement technique to cost-effectively assess the solar and wind energy potential in dense urban environments. Accomplishments and Outcomes By and large the project accomplished its goals of obtaining a detailed solar insolation data set and developing a novel measurement technique for building walls. The pyrometer installed on the roof of 1855 Broadway did produce a full year worth of data. The objective was to allow for the evaluation of solar energy technologies. The mounted camera did record the shadows on the southern wall but was more intermittent. As the project was based on data collection, there were no energy or cost savings. We did not manage to obtain wind measurements as a result of problems with the equipment connection. Challenges and Responses Generating the data set of the incidental radiation between the summer and winter solstice with higher precision and accuracy was the main challenge for the project, with continued monitoring of the Pyrometer and regular backing up of the data successfully fulfilled the goal. Other challenge was to measure the incidental radiation on the side wall, these challenge we tackled with the geometrical measurement of the wall dimension and images that we get from the camera facing the wall. For the pyrometer, there was some interference from adjacent cell phone transmitters but the amount of data lost was minimal. There was no response to this interference as it was not possible to move any of the transmitters nor was it feasible to locate the pyrometer out of their range. Reviewing the data and deleting any erroneous results rectified the problem. The camera had connectivity problems along with hardware problems on the logging computer. The connectivity problems were solved by asking the IT professionals at NYIT to investigate this issue. It was found that the camera needed to be reset often and the Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 interfered with the interface program. The original computer logging the images suffered a hard drive/motherboard failure and we were unable to recover the data. The response was to purchase an external hard drive to store the data separately. This worked very well. The weather station did not produce any data. This was likely caused by connectivity problems but they were never identified. Attempts will be made to operate the device in order to obtain one years worth of wind data on the roof of 1855 Broadway. The response is to remove the weather station and set it up internally to check that it is properly functioning. Campus Climate Action: Your School s Carbon Footprint The project was a data collection effort and therefore did not reduce greenhouse gas emissions in any way. It is envisioned that the data will be analyzed to determine if renewable energy technologies, solar photovoltaic and/or wind turbines, would be economically viable at the site. ENGAGEMENT AND SUPPORT Leaders and Supporters This project was the effort to derive technical detail to help achieve school s suitability goal. Project had a great deal of support from center of metropolitan sustainability at NYIT and especially Dr. Frank Zeman had dedicated his time and resources to achieve the goal of the project. Along with that Professor Stanley Greenwald, head Department of the Environmental Technology had guided throughout the project.

3 Funding and Resources The total project cost was $1, and included the digital light meter ($380), the pyrometer ($723), the internet camera ($97), the external hard drive ($80), a safety casing ($56), the weather station ($240) and the installation of the camera on the roof ($450). No additional fundraising was needed. The internal support was provided in the form of in-kind salary contribution for Dr. Zeman as well as the IT and maintenance staff. Dr. Zeman secured the necessary resources, which consisted of a computer and desk to act as network site for the camera. CONTACT INFORMATION Frank Zeman, Eng. Sc. D., Assistant professor and director of NYIT's Center for Metropolitan Sustainability fzeman@nyit.edu; MORE ABOUT YOUR SCHOOL Campus Sustainability History The New York Institute of Technology recently made sustainability an integral part of its 2030 plan by creating its interdisciplinary Center for Metropolitan Sustainability. The center was started in concert with the receipt of a Department of Energy grant. The grant led to the investigation of biofuel production from waste oil for food services. In addition, two Toyota Prius vehicles were converted to Plug-In hybrid technology using battery packs from A123 systems of Massachusetts. The grant was also used to start a paper recycling program and the creation of a student sustainability club. NYIT has also been running a successful energy conference with the 5 th Annual conference hosted on June 4 th of this year. The conference series focuses on the sustainable and efficient use of energy. COMMENTARY AND REFLECTION The key to getting good data is patience and vigilance. There are many factors that need to work together and you have to be on top of all of them. The most valuable aspect was getting real world data/information that can be studied and shared within the campus. The benefit will be its incorporation into teaching materials and research projects.

4 ADDITIONAL MATERIALS The primary objective of this research program was to collect data suitable for analysis. This was accomplished with complete calendar years worth of data analyzed to date. The figure below shows some results for the first six months of data. Figure 1: Summary of daily insolation (in kwh/m 2 ) for a horizontal surface collected on the roof of 1855 Broadway and compared to the expected data from the online resource PV Watts v1. The pyrometer recorded 50% (371 kwh/m 2 ) of the expected value with a clear drop in performance during the summer months attributable to smog and/or building shadows. In addition to the energy data presented above, each week was analyzed in terms of solar power (W/m 2 ) reaching the pyrometer. As the week presented below suggest, shadows play an important role in the available sunlight. Figure 2: Solar power received at pyrometer for the week of 6/17/09. Sunrise and sunset are 05:30 and 20:30 respectively. The graph shows the roof of 1855 shadowed until 08:20 (by Trump tower) and after 15:30 (by adjacent apartments). This may explain the noticeable drop shown in Figure 1.

5 The second aspect of data collection involved collecting images of the southern wall of 1855 for potential solar applications. To determine the feasibility of installing vertically mounted PV panels will depend on converting the rooftop data and comparing it with shaded areas on the wall. The data collected takes the form of web camera images. An image of the camera set up and another of the annotated southern wall are shown below. The camera is being used to record images of the southern wall that will be later analyzed to determine the product of the time and wall area lost to shadows. At this time we have a series of photographs and movies to analyze. Below are a series of four images that show the type of data collected. The four images are from July 15, 2009 and taken at (clockwise from top left) 11:19, 13:52, 14:34 and 17:00. The subsequent task is to create a computer program that can analyze these images and determine how much of the solar insolation is lost to shadows.

6 Another objective of the work was to incorporate the collected data into the educational experience of NYIT students. Below is a copy of the term paper assignment for the class ENGY 775 Alternative Energy Systems taught by Professor Zeman in the Spring of It is likely that this term paper will be assigned in subsequent classes taught by Professor Zeman. ENGY 775 F01 Term Paper Issued: March 5, 2010 Due: May 11, 2010 The term paper consists of an analysis of the solar potential of the main building (1855 Broadway) of NYIT s Manhattan campus. The analysis will be based on pyrometer data obtained from the roof of the building and digital images of the southern wall. The following is a list of files that are part of this work. Excel file containing one month of pyrometer data (horizontal plane) Image of roof with pyrometer location Image of southern wall with dimensions Ten (10) images of shadows on the southern wall Using the data provided and other resources (identify source as footnote), please answer the following question in report format. The final report cannot exceed ten (10) pages in length and must use a minimum of 12 pt font. Questions: 1. Produce a histogram of the daily solar radiation over the data period that includes the appropriate values from PV Watts v1 (HW2). Comment on how the resulting curve approximates the traditional bell curve. The x axis units are kwh/m2/day and the y axis units are count meaning for each division on the x axis, how many days fell in that range. 2. Research the sunrise and sunset times over the time period and calculate the total time (in minutes) that the pyrometer is in shadow morning and night. 3. Using the map for the roof of 1855, determine what is the maximum area available for PV installation based on peak solar angle during the summer and winder solstices. For your calculations, the roof has a parapet that is 55 high and the elevator bulkhead has a 1 ft parapet. The azimuth of the southern wall is 230 o. Use these calculations to estimate the amount of solar PV production for the roof using the latitude as tilt angle. 4. Convert the pyrometer data from the horizontal to the vertical. Produce a histogram similar to that of question Based on the photographs provided of the southern wall, divide the wall into at least three (3) sections and calculate the percent of the day that each is exposed to the sun (i.e. not in shadows). Assume consistency between images as well as sunrise and sunset. 6. Design a PV installation based on suitable sections of the wall established in question 4. Estimate the electricity production, using a-si double junction (page 88) for vertical panels. 7. Consider a sawtooth design where panels are at 40 o tilt and protrude 12 from the wall. Calculate the performance for the new design. By what percentage can the construction costs increase for this new design?