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TopIntroduction
Electricity is the main pillar in driving industrial development, health and agricultural development, real estate, and transportation. The scarcity of conventional sources and effects of electricity generation using fossil fuels is one of the important concerns, because of the harmful effects of these fuels.
Fossil fuel burning causes grave environmental harm. A great deal of these harmful effects can be avoided by using the renewable resources such as reducing the environmental impact by every kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electrical power produced with renewable resources (Alhaddad & Alsaad, 2016). Electrical power generated that is taken from fossil fuel causes depletion of fuel reserves. It will be used up at some time in the future. Solar energy can produce electricity by a variety of methods. Among these methods is the photovoltaic systems (Darwish et al., 2013; Samsudin, Rahman, & Wahid, 2016).
Renewable energy sources for producing electricity can be safe, clean, and environmentally friendly so these good features have triggered the scientists to pave a way for the development of research in the field of renewable energy sources, especially solar energy (Shiva-Kumar & Sudhakar, 2015). Solar energy is the electromagnetic waves in the form of light, which contain packets of energy known as photons. These photons produce electrical power by a process known as the photovoltaic effect (Nakkela, 2016).
The renewable energy sources are producing energy without any harmful effect of pollution. In addition, renewable energy comes from natural resources such as the sun light, the wind, and geothermal heat. These resources will naturally replenish (Magrabi, 2017). Figure 1 shows the world electrical power generated in 2016 from different renewable energy sources. The percentage of electrical power generation by solar technology is 6% (32,810GWh), the hydropower technology is the highest technology of electrical power generation, it generated 69% (4,163,310GWh), the geothermal is the lowest technology for electrical power generation, and it generated only 1% (82,654GWh) (IRENA, 2019).
Figure 1. Electricity generated by the renewable energy in world in 2016. Data Source: (IRENA, 2019).
The main motivation of this research study is to estimate the CO2 reduction, when the electricity generated by PV cells, to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, as well as this will be reflected on pollution reduction.
The objective of this paper is to evaluate the data of the seasonal weather that influence on the electrical power generation from renewable energy generated by PV cells to State of Kuwait, through designing maps represented by visualization figures of electricity power generation from PV cells daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.
The paper consists of eight sections. After the introduction, the literature review is introduced. Next, photovoltaic principles and types is introduced. After that, meteorological parameters are provided in the fourth section. Research steps and data analysis presented in the fifth section. System efficiency calculated in the sixth section. Monthly CO2 reduction estimated in the seventh section. Finally, conclusions and recommendations are discussed.
TopLiterature Review
The problems of energy are related to global warming and environmental concerns by energy supply and use. The world’s CO2 emissions are those stemming from the burning of fossil fuels and the manufacture of cement, it is approximately 36,138,285kt in 2014 (WBG, 2019). This includes CO2 produced during consumption of solid, liquid, and gas fuels and gas flaring. To prevent these effects, the world turns to energy conservation and the improvement of energy efficiency, a reduction in fossil fuel use and to the increase in environmentally friendly energy supplies (Dinçer & Meral, 2010).
Renewable technologies are considered as easy sources of energy and optimal use of these resources has become inevitable, not only due to the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels, but also to sustain life on earth and minimize many environmental impacts. Renewable energy is derived from natural procedures that are replenished constantly in its various form such as; solar energy, wind energy, biofuels energy, geothermal energy, hydropower energy, ocean energy, and bioenergy (Akan et al., 2015).