COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

CENTRAL PHILIPPINE UNIVERSITY

Jaro, Iloilo City, Philippines
Tel No: 63 (33) 3291971 loc 1084

CONCEPT PAPER FORM

Date: December 09, 2016
Section A (to be completed by the students)

Name:
JOHN DAVE V. JABATAN
Project Title:
SATELLITE IMAGERY ANALYSIS FOR OPTIMAL SOLAR FARM LOCATIONS IN PANAY
ISLAND
Project Description

The problem:
With the rise of variable renewable energy as mandated by RA 9513 or the Renewable Energy
Act of 2008, 26 percent of the Philippines’ total power generation is accounted to said sources
(Inquirer, June 2016). These sources include biomass, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and ocean
energy plants. Unfortunately, less than one percent of the energy mix is attributed to the
combination of wind, solar, and biomass plants (ac3s, 2015).

The current solution:

The National Renewable Energy Program under the Department of Energy is heavily reliant on
two sources alone: 1) hydropower; and 2) geothermal energy.

However, for hydropower plants, construction usually involves placing large dams which take
up time, money, and land area. Construction must also be built to a high standard in order to
withstand the intense pressure of containment. According to the U.S. Department of Energy
(2005), drought can affect a dam to the point where it can no longer effectively produce
electricity. Factor in the Philippine tropical climate which consists of high temperatures and high
humidity (PAGASA-DOST, 2016), this makes our hydroelectric systems less effective than it
should be. Panay Island is under Type III climate, which is characterized by dry seasons and no
pronounced maximum rainfall.

For geothermal energy, the disadvantages are usually associated with the stability of the
location. Mishandling geothermal energy can cause the release of harmful gases and render
the plant inoperable in case the steam runs out due to poor water mixture, thus extensive
training and research is required for proper operation (Conserve Energy Future, 2016). In
extreme cases, a geothermal program can cause earthquakes and ground instability such as
the one recorded in Basel, Switzerland in 1997 (Treehugger, 2007) and in Newcastle, New
South Wales in 1989 (Cosmos, 2014).

The proposed solution:

Given the problems associated with hydropower and geothermal, the study aims to convince
the energy department to invest more in solar alternatives for reliable energy generation. As
stated earlier, the Philippine archipelago is situated near the equator (World Atlas, 2016),
where the countries along said line receive the most sunlight. Thus, it is logical to consider
solar energy as a primary source of renewable energy.

The rationale is that, according to the University of Minnesota (n.d.), solar energy is indefinitely
renewable (due to the Sun continuously producing energy), minimum maintenance is needed
due to non-moving parts (except the motors used to turn the solar panels to the appropriate
angle for maximum sunlight capture), silent and noise-free, easy installations, and often have a
longer usable lifespan, not to mention that solar energy is also one of the cleanest forms of
energy generation (Conserve Energy Future, 2016).

The main disadvantages are, however, that it is heavily dependent on weather conditions,
energy conversion is not highly efficient, it requires a massive land area for effective power
generation, and that solar energy systems obviously cannot operate at night (Greenmatch,
n.d.).
 However, these problems could easily be compensated. In the case of night operation, a solar
farm can make use of a net-metering process to return power to the grid, and make use of that
power at night (The Solar Company, n.d.). Any excess power generated during the day will be
transferred to the grid, and the needed power will be compensated by the stored energy during
the night (Meralco, 2016). Alternately, in the case of solar energy generation more than the
specified capabilities of the plant, the energy may be “bottled” using large battery banks
(KQED, 2016).

The other disadvantage is the relatively low efficiency as with other power generation systems.
Solar cells can only capture around 10-20 percent (Woodford, C., 2007). This is mainly due to
the limits of physics and the law of conservation of energy. Sunlight contains a broad mixture of
photons at different wavelengths, and a solar cell can only capture a certain band of
wavelengths to be converted into energy. This is known as the Shockley-Queisser limit, which
theoretically only allows 30 percent maximum solar cell efficiency. However, recent
breakthroughs have allowed the limit to be breached, such as Insolight solar cell with 36.4
percent efficiency (Inhabitat, 2016) and the solar cell devised by the UNSW Engineering team
with more than 40 percent efficiency (Science Alert, 2014).

The last set of disadvantages are the ones that will be tackled by this study: the weather
variability issue and the land area issue. Surveying areas one by one and gathering data from
multiple ground-based weather stations will be a tedious job, however, remote-sensing will
make the optimization problem a lot easier. This remote-sensing will obtain land-based
information from a distance, especially satellites (NOAA, 2015) and these data will be gathered
over time. A number of satellites are currently orbiting above the Philippines’, and these data
may be accessed thru proper channels. Some of these satellites are the Japanese Himawari-8
(JMA, n.d.), the US-based Landsat-8 (NASA, 2016) and even the Philippines’ very own
microsatellite, the DIWATA (DOST, 2016). Over time, data from these satellites will be gathered,
and thru image analysis, a filter could be applied that will specify the unusable and inefficient
areas, such as the ones with frequent cloud covers, thick rainforests, difficult geographies, and
other constraints. From the imagery and analysis, an optimum location could be found wherein
such solar plants installed will perform with maximum efficiency.

Hardware Requirements:

Computer system with good processing power and ample RAM

External storage devices (preferably HDD’s) for massive data gathering
High bandwidth internet connection (preferably DSL or fiber-optics)

Software Requirements:

Internet browser with Java, Flash and HTML5 (preferably Firefox by Mozilla)
Mathworks MATLAB r2016a with Image Processing Toolbox
Mathworks MATLAB r2016a with Image Region Analyzer App
IBM SPSS
Microsoft Office Excel 2016

Section B (for faculty use only)

Evaluator 1 Date:
Review:
Evaluator 2 Date:
Review:
Evaluator 3 Date:
Review:
Approved Disapproved

____________________________
Subject Coordinator