Fabrice Motte

Tilos, the first autonomous renewable green island in Mediterranean: A Horizon 2020 project

This paper presents the project Tilos consisting in maximizing the use of clean (renewable) energy sources for covering the electricity needs of the Tilos island in Greece. The objectives of this Horizon 2020 project are presented and a synthesis of the realized work two years after the beginning of the project is shown.

Thermocline Storage Filled with Structured Ceramics. Numerical Consistency of the Developed Numerical Model and First Observations

Abstract The attraction of solar energy is greatly enhanced by the possibility of it being used during times of reduced or non-existent solar flux, such as weather induced intermittences or the darkness of the night. Therefore optimizing thermal storage for use in solar energy plants is crucial for the success of this sustainable energy source. Here we present a study of a structured bed filler dedicated to Thermocline type thermal storage, believed to outweigh the financial and thermal benefits of other systems currently in use such as packed bed Thermocline tanks. Several criterions such as Thermocline thickness and Thermocline centering are defined with the purpose of facilitating the assessment of the efficiency of the tank to complement the standard concepts of power output. A numerical model is developed that reduces to two dimensions the modeling of such a tank. The structure within the tank is designed to be built using simple bricks harboring rectangular channels through which the solar heat transfer and storage fluid will flow. The model is scrutinized and tested for physical robustness, and the results are presented in this paper. The consistency of the model is achieved within particular ranges for each physical variable.

Bounded global irradiation prediction based on multilayer perceptron and time series formalism

As global solar radiation forecasting is a very important challenge, several methods are devoted to this goal with different levels of accuracy and confidence. In this study we propose to better understand how the uncertainty is propagated in the context of global radiation time series forecasting using machine learning. Indeed we propose to decompose the error considering four kinds of uncertainties: the error due to the measurement, the variability of time series, the machine learning uncertainty and the error related to the horizon. All these components of the error allow to determinate a global uncertainty generating a prediction bands related to the prediction efficiency. We also have defined a reliability index which could be very interesting for the grid manager in order to estimate the validity of predictions. We have experimented this method on a multilayer perceptron which is a popular machine learning technique. We have shown that the global error and its components are essentials to quantify in order to estimate the reliability of the model outputs. The described method has been successfully applied to four meteorological stations in Mediterranean area.

Performance improvement of a BIST water collector: a parametric study

A flat-plate solar collector with high building integration was designed and prototyped. The experimentations showed that the performances of this solar collector can be improved. A numerical thermal model, developed in Matlab® environment using a finite difference model, was validated. Then, a modelling of the complete solar domestic hot water system (solar collector + water storage + piping) was realized. The performance of this system was calculated for various solar collector configurations such as the number and the position of the water pipes, air layer thickness, fluid flow rate, etc. Several solar fractions were used to implement this optimization procedure. An optimized solar collector structure is finally presented.

A New Energy Concept to Minimize Electricity Consumption in Industry or Buildings

A new concept of flat plate solar collector is presented: its originality comes from its remarkable shape and from its integration into a rainwater gutter. The complete solar collector consists in several short modules connected serially. After a brief presentation of the building energy problem, the new patented solar collector is described and the two thermal experimentations are shown. A numerical model is developed in Matlab® 15 environment using a finite difference model and an electrical analogy. At last, the thermal model is validated from experimental data under various meteorological situations. The adequacy of the model with the experimental data is shown for various temperatures inside the solar collector and for the water temperatures.

H2OSS®: THERMAL SOLAR COLLECTOR WITH A HIGHT BUILDING INTEGRATION

A new concept of flat plate solar collector is presented: its originality comes from its remarkable shape and from its integration into a rainwater gutter. The complete solar collector consists in several short modules connected serially. After a brief presentation of the building energy problem, the new patented solar collector is described and the two thermal experimentations are shown. A numerical model is developed in Matlab® 15 environment using a finite difference model and an electrical analogy. At last, the thermal model is validated from experimental data under various meteorological situations. The adequacy of the model with the experimental data is shown for various temperatures inside the solar collector and for the water temperatures.