Load forecasting plays a substantial role in designing a power harvesting system.
All manufacturing plants are highly dependent on the primary grid as their main
power supply. Manufacturing plant consumes high electricity due to its nature
that requires the plant to operate 24 hours a day. This study explores the potential
of solar harvesting system for high grid consumer, and it is conducted to
investigate the possibility for manufacturing plant X to rely on the renewable
energy as an alternative power supply. Based on the demand of power that may
vary during on-peak and off-peak in conjunction with business planning, a
forecasting model has been developed to predict the plant’s demand. Based on the
model developed, an optimal design of the PV harvesting system for the
manufacturing plant is proposed using Hybrid Optimization of Electrical
Renewable (HOMER) software with respect to economic aspect. The designed
system managed to supply 88.2% of the demand meanwhile 11.2% were supplied
by the main grid. However, the cost is intolerable with calculated operating and
maintaining the system is RM14.7M (USD 3.57M) per month as compared to
current cost which is significantly less. Further research on hybrid renewable
energy harvesting may be conducted that may improve the proposed system.
Keywords
ARIMA model, Energy forecasting, Manufacturing plant, Renewable energy, Solar harvesting