Energy Harvesting from Airports

Abstract

Verbatim from Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons. Not paraphrased, not summarized.

Airports around the world are primarily powered using the country’s electricity grids, which comes from a large number of powerplants (coal, natural gas, etc.). Due to a high power supply demand by the airports, the sources from which they get their electricity has become non-economical and non-environment friendly. As a result, many airports around the world have opted for using solar energy grids for their energy generation, in a bid to reduce the airport’s electricity consumption costs. But it has been a slow progress as only a few airports have been able to implement this feature, as their initial setup costs were considered too high by many. The solution that I want to propose is to maintain a hybrid power usage factor at the airports itself, where, over a period of time airport’s dependency on the electricity grid is slowly transferred to the airport’s own power generation facilities (combination of solar panels and wind farms in/near airport vicinity). The solution is practical in the manner, that the use of non-sustainable sources for electricity production, would be slowly replaced by renewable energy generation facilities over a given time frame, with more savings in cost as compared to current methods (e.g. Cochin International Airport is the world’s first solar powered airport). Also due to the possibility of switching of ground and air transports to electric power in the future, the airport’s own power generation comes as an added advantage in extensive fuel saving in the future.

Author

• Roy, Deepon Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Keywords

• Power generation
• Renewability
• Cost effectiveness
• Management and Operations
• Power and Energy