AME Seminar: Yasir Alfulayyih

Abstract: Today, decarbonizing and decentralizing the power sector are global goals. One of the promising solutions for achieving these goals is the utilization of renewable energy (RE) resources. However, due to the intermittence nature of such resources and the complexity of modeling a RE power plant (REPP), site potential assessment and sizing a REPP are very challenging; therefore, we are proposing an algorithm and a suggested modeling procedure for the purpose of sizing a REPP while these issues are considered. There are two phases in our work. Phase-I consists of: 1. modeling a single RE resource power plant based on a single performance-weather-related factor (PWRF) and a single energy storage system (ESS); and 2. investigating the effect of the first-day harvesting on the sizing of REPP. Phase-II consists of: modeling a hybrid REPP along with multiple PWRFs and different ESS, 2. a new weather year data set generation methodology for hybrid REPP application that is called the ABTMY. Both phases have been applied for Tucson, Arizona, USA. So far, the work has shown a very promising primary result; additionally, it has led to: 1. a new suggested method for finding the most-frequent data point of a set that is experiencing high and low standard deviations, 2. wind turbine design and site potential graph, 3. a computer program generator for the ABTMY.

Bio:  Yasir Alfulayyih is holding an MS in mechanical engineering from the Michigan Technological University. His MS’s research was on investigating the possibility of using a nature-based inspired flowfield design for PEM fuel cell for the sake of enhancing the reaction area using a CFD approach. Currently, Alfulayyih is a Ph.D. student and a member of the Energy and Fuel Cell lab at the AME. Alfulayyih has been developing a computer program for modeling renewable energy power plants for synchronizing operation along with multiple options of short/long-term suitable energy storage systems. Additionally, Alfulayyih is a faculty member in the Mechanical Engineering Dept at Qassim University since 2010. His research interests are modeling of solar and wind power plants, green hydrogen production and storage, energy storage systems, and the design of physical and simulation experiments for sensitivity analysis and optimization purposes.