1
|
Mangiante MJ, Whung PY, Zhou L, Porter R, Cepada A, Campirano E, Licon D, Lawrence R, Torres M. Economic and technical assessment of rooftop solar photovoltaic potential in Brownsville, Texas, U.S.A. Comput Environ Urban Syst 2020; 80:1-101450. [PMID: 35444358 PMCID: PMC9016635 DOI: 10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2019.101450] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/28/2023]
Abstract
Localized assessment of solar energy economic feasibility will benefit the structuring of residential solar energy deployment globally. In the U.S. growing interest in rooftop residential solar among city managers has spurred the development of photovoltaic (PV) feasibility maps of the technical and economic solar potential within cities. The City of Brownsville, Texas was interested in evaluating solar feasibility for their city but lacked information to make informed policy decisions on PV development. This paper presents novel and systems approaches for determining the technical and economic feasibility of solar development for homes in the Brownsville using LiDAR and local information. Residential technical and economic potential was assessed by optimizing the internal rate of return (IRR) and an average residential building demand profile to determine ideal size and placement of solar arrays. Results showed that residential structures in Brownsville have the technical potential to generate approximately 11% of the total energy provided by the local utility; however, average IRR was only 2.9% with a payback period of over 15 years. Five neighborhoods in the City of Brownsville were identified with spatially clustered homes that had relatively higher IRRs compared with other areas in the city. Despite the high technical potential, modeled results indicate that perspective home owners interested in solar development may require additional incentives to improve the economic feasibility of PV in Brownsville. This study provides a demonstration of an interdisciplinary systems approach and methodology that can be adopted internationally to evaluate the feasibility of solar development in other areas.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Pai-Yei Whung
- United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711
| | - Luxi Zhou
- United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Washington, District of Columbia 20001
| | - Rachel Porter
- United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711
| | | | | | - David Licon
- City of Brownsville, Engineering Department, Brownsville, TX 78520
| | - Rob Lawrence
- United States Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX 75202
| | - Michael Torres
- City of Brownsville, Engineering Department, Brownsville, TX 78520
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Zhou L, Schwede DB, Wyat Appel K, Mangiante MJ, Wong DC, Napelenok SL, Whung PY, Zhang B. The impact of air pollutant deposition on solar energy system efficiency: An approach to estimate PV soiling effects with the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. Sci Total Environ 2019; 651:456-465. [PMID: 30243165 PMCID: PMC7156116 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.09.194] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/11/2018] [Revised: 09/11/2018] [Accepted: 09/15/2018] [Indexed: 05/16/2023]
Abstract
Deposition and accumulation of aerosol particles on photovoltaics (PV) panels, which is commonly referred to as "soiling of PV panels," impacts the performance of the PV energy system. It is desirable to estimate the soiling effect at different locations and times for modeling the PV system performance and devising cost-effective mitigation. This study presents an approach to estimate the soiling effect by utilizing particulate matter (PM) dry deposition estimates from air quality model simulations. The Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system used in this study was developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) for air quality assessments, rule-making, and research. Three deposition estimates based on different surface roughness length parameters assumed in CMAQ were used to illustrate the soling effect in different land-use types. The results were analyzed for three locations in the U.S. for year 2011. One urban and one suburban location in Colorado were selected because there have been field measurements of particle deposition on solar panels and analysis on the consequent soiling effect performed at these locations. The third location is a coastal city in Texas, the City of Brownsville. These three locations have distinct ambient environments. CMAQ underestimates particle deposition by 40% to 80% when compared to the field measurements at the two sites in Colorado due to the underestimations in both the ambient PM10 concentration and deposition velocity. The estimated panel transmittance sensitivity due to the deposited particles is higher than the sensitivity obtained from the measurements in Colorado. The final soiling effect, which is transmittance loss, is estimated as 3.17 ± 4.20% for the Texas site, 0.45 ± 0.33%, and 0.31 ± 0.25% for the Colorado sites. Although the numbers are lower compared to the measurements in Colorado, the results are comparable with the soiling effects observed in U.S.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Luxi Zhou
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, United States; National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, Washington, DC 20001, United States.
| | - Donna B Schwede
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, United States
| | - K Wyat Appel
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, United States
| | - Michael J Mangiante
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, United States
| | - David C Wong
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, United States
| | - Sergey L Napelenok
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, United States
| | - Pai-Yei Whung
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, United States
| | - Banglin Zhang
- Institute of Tropical and Marine Meteorology/Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Regional Numerical Weather Prediction, CMA, Guangzhou 510641, China
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Mangiante MJ, Davis AJS, Panlasigui S, Neilson ME, Pfingsten I, Fuller PL, Darling JA. Trends in nonindigenous aquatic species richness in the United States reveal shifting spatial and temporal patterns of species introductions. Aquat Invasions 2018; 13:323-338. [PMID: 31447950 PMCID: PMC6707539 DOI: 10.3391/ai.2018.13.3.02] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics underlying the introduction and spread of nonindigenous aquatic species (NAS) can provide important insights into the historical drivers of biological invasions and aid in forecasting future patterns of nonindigenous species arrival and spread. Increasingly, public databases of species observation records are being used to quantify changes in NAS distributions across space and time, and are becoming an important resource for researchers, managers, and policy-makers. Here we use publicly available data to describe trends in NAS introduction and spread across the conterminous United States over more than two centuries of observation records. Available data on first records of NAS reveal significant shifts in dominance of particular introduction patterns over time, both in terms of recipient regions and likely sources. These spatiotemporal trends at the continental scale may be subject to biases associated with regional variation in sampling effort, reporting, and data curation. We therefore also examined two additional metrics, the number of individual records and the spatial coverage of those records, which are likely to be more closely associated with sampling effort. Our results suggest that broad-scale patterns may mask considerable variation across regions, time periods, and even entities contributing to NAS sampling. In some cases, observed temporal shifts in species discovery may be influenced by dramatic fluctuations in the number and spatial extent of individual observations, reflecting the possibility that shifts in sampling effort may obscure underlying rates of NAS introduction.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Michael J Mangiante
- Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education (ORISE), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA
| | - Amy J S Davis
- Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education (ORISE), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA
| | - Stephanie Panlasigui
- Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education (ORISE), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA
| | - Matthew E Neilson
- U.S. Geological Survey, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, Gainesville, FL 32653, USA
| | - Ian Pfingsten
- Cherokee Nation Technologies, contracted with USGS, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, Gainesville, FL 32653, USA
| | - Pam L Fuller
- U.S. Geological Survey, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, Gainesville, FL 32653, USA
| | - John A Darling
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA
| |
Collapse
|
4
|
Panlasigui S, Davis AJ, Mangiante MJ, Darling JA. Assessing threats of non-native species to native freshwater biodiversity: Conservation priorities for the United States. Biol Conserv 2018; 224:199-208. [PMID: 30245526 PMCID: PMC6145479 DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2018.05.019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/08/2023]
Abstract
Non-native species pose one of the greatest threats to native biodiversity, and can have severe negative impacts in freshwater ecosystems. Identifying regions of spatial overlap between high freshwater biodiversity and high invasion pressure may thus better inform the prioritization of freshwater conservation efforts. We employ geospatial analysis of species distribution data to investigate the potential threat of non-native species to aquatic animal taxa across the continental United States. We mapped non-native aquatic plant and animal species richness and cumulative invasion pressure to estimate overall negative impact associated with species introductions. These distributions were compared to distributions of native aquatic animal taxa derived from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) database. To identify hotspots of native biodiversity we mapped total species richness, number of threatened and endangered species, and a community index of species rarity calculated at the watershed scale. An overall priority index allowed identification of watersheds experiencing high pressure from non-native species and also exhibiting high native biodiversity conservation value. While priority regions are roughly consistent with previously reported prioritization maps for the US, we also recognize novel priority areas characterized by moderate-to-high native diversity but extremely high invasion pressure. We further compared priority areas with existing conservation protections as well as projected future threats associated with land use change. Our findings suggest that many regions of elevated freshwater biodiversity value are compromised by high invasion pressure, and are poorly safeguarded by existing conservation mechanisms and are likely to experience significant additional stresses in the future.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Stephanie Panlasigui
- Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Engineering participant, US Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, United States
| | - Amy J.S. Davis
- Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Engineering participant, US Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, United States
| | - Michael J. Mangiante
- Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Engineering participant, US Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, United States
| | - John A. Darling
- National Exposure Research Laboratory, US Environmental Research Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, United States
| |
Collapse
|