Project MAE 3403 3/12/2018 The project is a simplified model of a solar collector and battery bank to predict the ad- equacy of a system. Data from the National Solar Radiation Database should be read...

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The project is a simplied model of a solar collector and battery bank to predict the ad-

equacy of a system. Data from the National Solar Radiation Database should be read from

http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old data/nsrdb/1991-2010/targzs/ for a user selected location.

Project MAE 3403 3/12/2018 The project is a simplified model of a solar collector and battery bank to predict the ad- equacy of a system. Data from the National Solar Radiation Database should be read from http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old data/nsrdb/1991-2010/targzs/ for a user selected location. Due Date: 4/29/18 10 pm Groups A group may consist of 1 or 2 members. Submit the name(s) of the group member(s) to D2L by Friday March 16, 10 pm. Assignment Your program should include all of the required items listed below and at least one of the optional items. Program Requirements • The graphical user interface (using PyQt5) should include user input of the following editable items: – Select station location; optional using zip code fetch all stations withing 50 miles – Area of solar cells – Efficiency of solar cells – Daily electric usage – Battery capacity • The data should be read from the National Solar Radiation Database for the years 1991 – 2010. Optional: data extracted to a temporary folder (using Python package “tempfile”) that is deleted upon exit. Optional: program searches folder to see if files already exist, if so no files are downloaded if they are not present they are retrieved from the internet • For every hour of every day the solar gain should be calculated from: gain = global ∗ panel area ∗ efficiency The “global” values given are for a horizontal surface. Optional: calculate the gain for panels tilted at an angle or optimally tracking the sun. • For every hour of every day the battery level should be calculated from: battery level = gain − usage + previous battery level where usage is the amount of electricity used during the 1 hour period. The usage should not be averaged over all 24 hours but rather some sort of “reasonable” usage pattern. The battery level can never be greater than the capacity or less than zero. Optional: have user input for “typical” usage pattern. • Show a plot of the battery level vs. time 1 http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/1991-2010/targzs/ • Compute the number of consecutive hours below a particular percentage of the maximum battery level. Present this to the user in a “nice” format. Optional: write this data along with the test information to an Excel spreadsheet. General Instructions Your programs must include the following: • Working code/program • Well-documented code with sufficient comments that the grader can understand the logic of the program and the flow of the program • Modular programming • Effiecient use of memory, disk space, cpu and downloading of data from the internet. • Document strings are to be used for all functions Do not use any of the following in your programs: • Hardcoded user inputs • “goto” statement 2