Smart car parks with EV charging for academic campus

Energy is directly related to the economy and its demand would increase with development in the industrial, residential, transportation, and commercial sectors. It is projected that by 2050, the global energy demand will experience a two-fold increase. Currently, almost 85 % of the consumed energy globally is generated by burning non-renewable sources like oil, coal, and gas. Open car parking areas at universities, shopping malls, hospitals, etc. are unexploited areas that have enormous potential to generate renewable energy without disturbing the flora and fauna of the region. This study analyses the techno-economic feasibility of generating grid-connected energy using solar photovoltaic, PV panels on the parking lots of academic institutions and utilizes a part of it for charging the parked EVs. The best system is found to produce energy at a cost of 0.0529 USD/kWh, almost 54 % less compared to the grid. In the proposed design, 69 % of the total energy is produced by solar PV and almost 52.5 % is sold to the grid. The capacity factor of the PV system, at this location, is 19.8 %. The annual utility bill saving is around US $ 798,100. The internal rate of return and simple payback period are 7.35 % and 10.9 years. The proposed system architecture also caters to an EV charging capacity of 195 MWh, about 1.5 % of the total energy consumption, and a charging load of 578 kWh/day. This proposed PV energy system, for the parking areas, can be adopted in any other region with similar climatic conditions.