SOLAR POWER TO THE PEOPLE
With his work on the viability of solar cells, PhD student Nelson Sommerfeldt is shining a light on the sustainability of this renewable energy source for the Swedish housing market.
Despite Sweden being a country that’s renowned for its unpredictable weather, integrating solar photovoltaic (solar-cell) systems into Swedish cooperative family housing has long been considered a viable and sustainable energy option.
However, the Bostadsrättsföreningar, the councils which manage this type of housing, have to make decisions on which energy providers or power systems will be of greatest benefit to their members. And they need the right information, because a significant amount of each housing council’s budget is spent on their energy supply. They can’t afford to get it wrong.
Yet, little independent information has been available about how, when or where to install solar-cell power technology. That is, until American PhD student Nelson Sommerfeldt stepped in.
By the time Sommerfeldt arrived at KTH from Michigan, funding had already been put aside for a project to investigate solar-cell systems. But with the lack of guidance for potential users it quickly became clear that the project needed to focus on empowering the decision-makers with the facts they needed to allocate their energy budgets. Sommerfeldt takes up the story:
“Three of us have been working on the project: me in Energy Technology and two researchers from the School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), one of whom looks at Real Estate Economics and Management, while the other looks at Building Technology.
“Initially I was solely focused on technique and the application of the solar technology, but that soon changed, as I’m a bit of an economics geek, so I also grabbed onto the economics of the project. We began to try and discover exactly why the councils choose the systems they did.”
Having the correct information on initial, running and projected costs is a key concern. When Sommerfeldt began his research he soon became aware that most of the information concerning the economic viability of solar power was in the hands of energy companies. He could see that there were few independent bodies providing substantial data on the cost efficiency of solar power.
“We did four or five case studies and I looked into the tech and economics,” he explains. “It was a three-year project which finished last spring. Part of the project was to produce a handbook as a first point of information for the housing councils to get practical information about solar power.”
Although only a short report was required, Sommerfeldt believed that something a little more in-depth was necessary and so the team produced a longer report in English to reflect their work.
“The project was supposed to be finished in December 2015 but we decided to wait and present it in the spring of 2016. We did that on a beautiful sunny day in April–excellent conditions for discussing solar energy,” he says, smiling.
Sommerfeldt and team were overwhelmed by the response.
“We published the report online at the same time as the print copy was released and we held a seminar here at KTH. There were more people at the seminar than we could actually fit in the room. We had people travelling from all over the place to attend. There were a lot of energy managers from municipalities there, but the head of research from Vattenfall, CEOs of tech start-ups, and a number of politicians also attended, so we were very happy.”
Between the online and print versions, over 1000 copies of the report have been distributed, giving people more access to information that can enable them to make informed decisions on choosing their energy supply. Now, with the costs of solar-cell technology decreasing, these sustainable and renewable energy systems are becoming more accessible.
And considering Sweden’s goal of relying 100% on sustainable energy by 2040, perhaps the team’s report has come at just the right time.
