Renewable energy systems: Industrial and home best practise case studies

• Autor(a) principal: Nabais, Victor
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Outros Autores: Gaspar, Pedro Dinis, Matias, João
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/7308
• topic: Renewable energy; Energy efficiency; Industrial context; Non-Industrial context

The use of renewable energies and energy efficiency improvement systems is sometimes constrained by the investment needed for devices and its installation. However, governments have developed policies to reduce the initial costs to end-users. The increasing number of renewable energy systems can help in the reduction of the global dependency on fossil energy sources, and simultaneously can help to ensure that the carbon dioxide emissions quota is not exceeded, aiming a reduction of the green-house effect. In this sense, this paper presents two best practise case studies. One of them is in the industrial context and other in the residence context, concerning the use of renewable energy systems and energy efficiency improvement strategies. The best practice case study in industrial context involves the renewable energy systems design in an automotive sector factory, making use of solar thermal panels and energy efficiency measures. The non-industrial case study covers the analysis of the energy efficiency improvement using a thermal energy recovery system from hot water used in daily baths or showers. The direct benefits (savings) and indirect (impacts) are analysed for both case studies.