Development of a decision support system to operate the greenhouse lighting and shading systems powered by a distributed generator

摘要

A Decision Support System (DSS) was developed to manage the use of the electric- ity generated by a landfill gas-fired 250 kW microturbine system installed at the Rut- gers EcoComplex Research and Demonstration Greenhouse located at the Burlington County Resource Recovery Complex near Columbus, NJ. The approximately 220 kW of available power (30 kW are parasitic losses) can be used on-site for supplemental lighting of the greenhouse crop, or it can be exported to the local electricity grid. In order to maintain sufficiently high crop production during the winter months and darker stretches during other times of the year, supplemental lighting is necessary particularly in the Northern regions of the country. Due to the relatively high light intensity required, supplemental lighting of greenhouse crops can be expensive. The DSS minimizes the cost of the electricity associated with supplemental lighting and guarantees that the harvest date and yield targets are achieved. The DSS can be implemented at any location within the geographic area of PJM (regional transmission organization that coordinates the wholesale electricity market in 13 states, including NJ) and it was validated by simulation using five years of his- toric hourly values of electricity prices from PJM and hourly values of solar radiation from the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB). The simulations results show that the DSS is able to effectively manage different possible configurations of the supplemental lighting and shading screen systems to meet a predetermined harvest date and yield while minimizing the use of the on-site generated electricity. All of the excess electricity is exported to the grid in such a way as to maximize the additional income from electricity sales.