Feasibility assessment of floating solar system over the old Brahmaputra river within the Mymensingh municipality, Bangladesh

Abstract

This research uses numerical methods to assess the efficiency of a floating solar panel on the Old Brahmaputra River flowing through the Mymensingh City Corporation, Bangladesh. A model was created and simulated using both Ansys and Matlab/Simulink using the data collected from the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Bangladesh Water Development Board regarding water properties of the river and other ambient conditions of the area to gauge the cell temperature of the system as a floating solar panel and a ground solar panel and the pressure and motion, force acting on the pontoon which is later applied to assess the research objective. Later, the total electricity output was measured using the cell temperature. This research showed that a floating solar panel generates more electricity as the efficiency increases by 2% compared to a ground solar panel in the same environment. Moreover, the result also shows that, since the Old Brahmaputra River is a basin river, the wave force of the river is not high enough to cause any significant damage to the system if installed as a flexible system.