Overview

In this lesson, you will be pulling together all the elements of the course from the past months and composing the first draft of your solar project proposal for evaluation by your peers. We are doing the proposal to your client in two stages (the draft, then the final submission) so that you may have time to develop your ideas and background research, and so that you may learn from others by reviewing, and being reviewed by a peer from the class. Your proposal will convey the full spectrum of skills that you have been developing to better accomplish the goal of solar design: to maximize solar utility for your client and stakeholders in their specific locale. We have broken down the course into three main blocks, which I will review here:

1. Engineering/Technological: resource assessment, shading analysis, technology assessment, technology performance simulation
2. Economic/Financial: financial constraints, financial simulations, elasticity of demand, comparative analysis, reducing risk
3. Risk Management: broader impacts, policy constraints, stakeholder analysis, sustainability and ecosystems services assessment

This lesson is another step in preparation for the final project, which will include using SAM from NREL and will require a project proposal that addresses location, client, and technology (sustainability).

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

• propose a solar project that addresses the goal of solar design;
• review a peer's proposal draft in terms of the goal of solar design.

What is due for Lesson 11?

This lesson will take us one and a half weeks to complete. Please refer to the Course Syllabus for specific time frames and due dates. Specific directions for the assignment below can be found within this lesson.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please post them to the Lesson 11 General Questions and Comments Discussion Forum. I will check the forum regularly to respond. While you are in a discussion, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.

Design is an extremely important aspect for successfully implementing solar energy systems. To illustrate this point, let us begin with a simple concept of what design is. A proposed theory that helps to provide understanding is that Design is PATTERN with a PURPOSE. Simply put, design is utilizing purposeful approaches to create systems that fit patterns. In Figure 11.1, below, we can see a cartoon illustrating a simplified pattern of relations. At the outside is the influence of the solar resource and ecosystems services, while the three inner rings are related to the coupled influence of the locale, the client, and the actual installed solar energy conversion technology. No useful project can be implemented without context and associated patterns. In fact, these patterns serve as guidelines and parameters for what a system can accomplish.

We can think about the region with respect to the connectivity to additional services (power grid, thermal lines), and think about the region with respect to the diversity of solar systems possible. Does a homeowner in Puerto Rico need large quantities of hot water, or the capacity to cool space?

Figure 11.1 A systemized pattern of relations -- an essential for project implementation. Rings progress inward from solar resource, to ecosystems services, to locale, to client, and finally to the applied solar technology.

Credit: Jeffrey R. S. Brownson

A well-designed project will make use of an integrative process, an approach that essentially dictates that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. System design does not merely involve putting together all the required parts and constructing it into a functioning system. It involves careful consideration of how each part fits into the overall system goals set by the stakeholders(clients), while also taking account of the environmental context the system is meant to work in.

By emphasizing the integrated design approach, we identify the solar utility, client and stakeholder, and project locale as the three main components for the goal of solar design. Each of these cannot be addressed without engaging the frameworks of the other two. These components also play a vital role as constraints. Constraints are useful tools for designers since they serve as guidelines for the design decision process.

The design process starts with establishing system goals. The responsible stakeholders generally define the system goals by stating what requirements they have for the system. The solar designer must take this information, coupled with the project locale and solar utility, to determine how much energy can be produced. In the next few sections, we will go into some detail on all of these.

Failure to consider all the important aspects in the design of any project will eventually lead to a system that performs poorly.

Learning Activity: Preparing your project proposal draft

Now it's time to pull the prior work together for a proposal to your clients. You are to use both SAM and your knowledge about the solar resource and economic decision making to propose one or more solar solutions for your client.

Your proposal should demonstrate the full spectrum of skills that you have been developing to accomplish this goal of solar design. At the same time the proposal should not be a heavy technical paper but rather should be crafted as a well-justified pitch to your client. The technical data on project design should be used to strengthen and support your message, not to confuse your potential reader.

In this course, the information covered has been broken down into three distinctive arcs:

1. Technological Assessment: resource assessment, technology assessment, system performance simulations
2. Economic Assessment: financial analysis, incentives, elasticity of demand, comparison of alternatives
3. Sustainability/Risk Assessment: broader impacts, ways to reduce risk, uncertainty analysis, policy, stakeholder analysis, sustainability and ecosystems services

The project proposal should present some data and analysis to address all three of these important aspects of project development.

Tools to use:

Use any and all available tools to form a creative project proposal that will engage your client and be a compelling first step in project development. Using SAM software will be required, and I recommend that you use the "Create/Duplicate Case" menu to explore various options for a SECS project on behalf of your client. Go back to Lesson 6 for ideas, too. You are welcome to use the financial analysis spreadsheet we worked with in Lesson 7, although that is optional - you can as well use SAM for financial modeling. 

Here are some resources from the USA Dept. of Energy:

• Open EI [1]: Energy Information Database
• Buildings Performance Database [2]
• Green Power Network [3]
• Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy [4] (DSIRE)

There are also the extensive resources available at the 7Group website [5]:

Key elements to include:

1. Title /author's name / date, semester (you can include a separate title page to improve the looks) 
2. Introduction - brief synopsis on what this project is about, motivation, and goals
3. General information on locale, client, and potential stakeholders
4. Building/site characterization (if appropriate: energy demand and energy provider)
5. SECS options: analysis of Solar PV /Solar Hot Water / or other and design (including efficiency strategies)
6. Economic Considerations (cost analysis, incentives, payback..)
7. Environmental Impacts and Ecosystems Assessment (consider both positive impacts and possible concerns)
8. Recommended Integrative Design Plan (charrette, timeline, implementation, plan for commissioning and maintenance)
9. References

When writing, try to look at your narrative through stakeholder's lens. It is important to relate the analysis you do to your client's goals and clearly explain the presented information to your audience. It is good to finish your proposal with a strong statement summarizing your key findings and benefits your project would bring. 

This week, at the pre-proposal stage, you may not be able to complete all of the elements and include all data you want to include. That is fine. If you need more work on a specific part of your proposal - just make space for it, provide a heading, and a description what is to be completed and to be included in the final document, so that your reviewer sees that you do are not forgetting anything important. Also, the above list can be used as proposal structure, but if you see a need to modify it to better fit your case, please feel creative.

Deliverables this week

For the first draft (pre-proposal), develop a 5-7 page document (Doc or PDF format) that would be a hybrid of an outline and written report (you can expand on finer details later in the final submission). This work is somewhat similar to Lesson 6, but this time you are specifying your own client and locale. Please submit your pre-proposal draft and *.sam file to "Project Proposal Draft" dropbox in Canvas. Further you will be able to see someone else’s proposal assigned to you for review in the same dropbox. The peer review assignments will be made by the instructor.

Once all pre-proposals are in, you will have three days for the peer-review task. You will send your peer-review and annotated author's proposal directly to the author and will submit it to a separate dropbox in Canvas for instructor's assessment. More detailed peer review instructions are given on the next page of this lesson and in Canvas. Please provide constructive feedback to your peers. You may also get new ideas for your own project from your peers during this review process, and your peer will provide you with ways to strengthen your own proposal. So, the benefits should be multifold, and if you each strive for excellence and creativity, your final proposal due in the final week will be strong and compelling and will have a high likelihood of receiving a high grade.

Please see the grading rubrics for the pre-proposal, peer-review, and final proposal tasks in Canvas.

Deadlines

Check the Canvas Calendar for specific due dates.

Learning Activity - Peer Review

In Canvas you will be provided with a list of partners to review. While you should feel creative about reviewing your peers' work, I also want to provide you with some guidelines for reviewing.

Directions

• Edit the submitted PDF: Your peers are responsible for producing PDF documents for you to review. You are then going to mark up the PDFs with your own comments.
• Check the *.sam file from the simulations: Your peer should share his/her SAM model with you as a source of data to review. You don't need to dig deep into it, but it will be useful to check the SAM results against the statements in the proposal draft.
• Compose a reviewer summary: Take your analysis of the draft and write up a formal review in a summary narrative (saved as a PDF document).

You can use the following 8 criteria elements to structure your review. Try to compose your reviewer comments in the third person, and back up your constructive criticism with examples found in the document (or the absence of content). Most reviews of compelling proposals will be 1-2 pages. If extensive errors or omissions are found, the itemized listing of corrections may extend the review length. You will be evaluated on your ability to provide constructive feedback to your peer that will strengthen their final proposal. 

Peer Review should include:

1. Summary: Quick executive statement of what is presented (e.g. Jane D. has presented a proposal "  <Title> " for ... that compares ... with ...)
2. General comments: A broad statement of your impressions gathered in reviewing the proposal. This should include any major errors or omissions that appear to seriously weaken the proposal. This should also include constructive and positive statements of the proposal overall.
3. Itemized list of corrections: A short bulleted listing of errors found in the document, identified by page number. This list can also be linked to groups of errors found in the PDF for expediency.
4. Innovativeness: Was this proposal creative, novel, or used non-traditional approach to the goals; or was the proposal fairly standard in its approach? This is not a good or bad interpretation of the content, rather a statement of a compelling and novel approach.
   e.g. The overall approach made use of extensive research into the solar resource in a creative way by ...
5. Relevance to the Goal of Solar Design: Did the author appear to fulfill the goal to maximize solar utility for the client in the given locale?
   e.g. The author created a compelling argument that involved a detailed analysis of the stakeholder...and formed a well-defined context for the locale...
6. Practical relevance: Is this proposal grounded in both financial and solar resource foundations, or might the author be over-/understating the claims for performance?
7. Clarity of the manuscript: A summary statement of the spelling/grammar, organization of content, and proper use of visual imagery to sway the client
8. Recommendation: This is analogous to a recommendation for publication in a peer-reviewed journal process
   • proposal rewrite will need major revisions before submission,
   • submit proposal rewrite with minor revisions noted in PDF,
   • rewrite content as-is into the final proposal (aka: the author walks on water)

Submitting Your Work

Please upload your (i) marked-up PDF and (ii) Reviewer Summary to the "Peer Review of Project Proposal" dropbox in Canvas and send a copy of each directly to your peer through Canvas by the assigned deadline.

Grading criteria for peer reviews

Your peer review will be evaluated out of 15 pts.

• 5 points: marked-up PDF indicates that the entire document was reviewed in detail in an attempt to strengthen the proposal. (3 pts if document appears to have been scanned only for major errors)
• 10 points: reviewer summary is complete with all the above-listed 9 criteria elements addressed in a thoughtful manner. Full points when student establishes clear and constructive comments that attempt to strengthen the proposal for the final submission.

Summary

Good work pulling your first drafts together, and reviewing the content from your peers. By this time, you should be finding that the goal of solar design and engineering provide us with a framework to flesh out compelling proposals for future solar energy conversion systems development. You may also have noticed the benefit of working with peers to improve your approach and strengthen or focus your proposals. This is again a part of the integrative design process.

Think about the larger teams that you will need to be a part of in future projects. Is there an ideal transdisciplinary team that you might recruit to develop and deploy future solar projects?