The Transition

Abstract

The energy transition is a hot topic, businesses also need to think about manners to transition to sustainable energy. Within this graduation the- sis, a stakeholder is involved named the ‘Nederlandse Spoorwegen’, in short NS. The stakeholder has the ambition to make their station’s en- ergy neutral. To achieve this, electricity generating assets needs to be implemented on every asset they own. One of these assets is the P+R parking plots near stations. An easy way of implementing solar into the parking plots is by integrating the solar panels into a carport structure. Current solar carport designs which have been constructed so far, are purely focusing on the aspect of generating the maximum amount of electricity and neglecting the aspect of design. The NS has the ambition to make the carport design sustainable in appearance and material use. Besides the sustainable appearance of the design, the design should be applicable in every P+R parking plots. This results in a modular sustain- able carport design that is orientation independent. For the design, a solar cell technology was needed. Three generations of solar cells were found in literature, but the third generation was not further researched since this generation isn’t commercially available yet. The remaining two generations of solar cell technologies (1st and 2nd generation) were researched on the following topics; performance, de- sign, and sustainability. The information found in this literature research directly fed the multi-criteria analysis (MCA) method called the analyt- ical hierarchy process. With this MCA method, polycrystalline silicon solar cell technology was selected to be the best suitable for the design. Another downside to the current solar carport designs is that these de- signs don’t fully exploit the structural capabilities of the solar panels. In the final design, a connection is designed and analyzed to exploit the structural capabilities of the solar panels, whilst still keeping the trans- parent nature of the solar panels intact. The final design features recycled rail tracks in the structure of the car- port. Besides being made from high-grade steel and the shape of the rail tracks suits their integrating into the structure, the direct link to the stakeholder was also recognized as a benefit for the final selection of this material. To further enhance the sustainable appearance/function of the carport, a green wall is implemented to absorb the rainwater. Thus, im- proving the water absorption in the asphalt dominated landscape of the P+R parking plots. In particular, the design of the sustainable solar carport for the NS is analyzed on solar radiation performance and structural performance (on carport scale and on connection scale). To gain an understanding if the new connection is beneficial on a carbon footprint scale, the newly designed connection is compared to a standard aluminum transom and mullion system.