Flexible Photovoltaic System on Non-Conventional Surfaces: A Techno-Economic Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review: sustainability-1556525

Summary:

This work presented a techno-economic investigation of the flexible solar panels applied to flat, cylindrical and hemisphere surfaces. Prototype was built. Weather data and system output were measured and acquired. Several system parameters were studied using Taguchi, and RSM methods. The results showed that applying the flexible panels to the hemisphere surface has the highest NPV. The results also showed that for every type of surface, there seem to be optimal environmental parameters and conditions that yield the best performance.

 

General recommendations:

• Please use abbreviations at first instance of a phrase.
• Please proofread the manuscript for grammar, spelling, …etc.

 

Abstract:

“This method…” refers to what? Please state the method first.

Line 23: “In the LabVIEW..”, perhaps is better to use “Using LabVIEW…”. Not sure what is the significance of recognizing and transmitting warm and dry climate data. Please clarify. Do you mean that weather data was acquired and transmitted wirelessly?

Line 25: Please correct the Watt unit to “W”, not “w” throughout the manuscript.

Line 27: “Flat” should be “flat”.

The abstract should briefly state the purpose of the research, the principal results, and major conclusions. It should also highlight the innovations.

 

Keywords: Please remove capital letter at the beginning of the words.

Symbols column in the Nomenclature table, please correct the Area unit from “m2” to “m²”

 

Introduction:

The literature might lack references related to the latest flexible solar panels of the same scope of work.

Line 43: Please remove extra space before “Also”.

Line 44: Please spell-out PV, since it is the first instance.

Line 46: What is “FITs”? Please clarify.

Line 48: Please remove the word “photovoltaic”

Line 50: “Aside from the non-linear 50 nature and environmental dependability of PV systems, the conversion of energy by PV panels is undesirable [6].” This is a bit confusing and not sure it is correct claim. Please clarify.

Line 62: Abbreviation “GHG” should be added here and removed from Line 63.

Line 64: “…on the increase.” is a bit awkward. Suggest using “on the rise”.

Line 66 to 69: “Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) is one of the most promising contributors to net-zero energy buildings, while also increasing the aesthetic value of the built environment and Thermal and sound insulation properties [12]” is a very long sentence. Please consider partitioning. Also, the word “Thermal” should be “thermal”.

Line 70: “Like” should be “like”

Line 73: “…reduce efficiency”. You mean increase efficiency, not reduce efficiency. Please double check.

Line 77: Please double check the use of “An” in “An increasing human…”.

Line 83: Please check “non-co2”

Line 83 to 86: “it also…” is very long sentence. Please consider partitioning.

Line 96: “Major market…”. Please paraphrase.

Line 106: “One of 106 the solutions to…”. Very long sentence. Please consider partitioning.

 

Materials and Methods:

Please improve the quality of Figure 1. Please revise the caption of Figure 1.

Line 43: “Solar should be “solar”.

Line 149: “Ambient” should be “ambient”

Line 198: Remove “signal-to-noise”

The numbers for the equations are out of place.

 

Discussion: The discussion part is very limited and short. I’d recommend enriching the discussion for all the results- discuss the added value of the results, show how the results stack up against other published work, and address why the results are significant?

Conclusion:

The conclusion should not be repeating the abstract or just summarizing the results. It should include other aspects of the work such as applicability, sustainability, limitations, and future work.

 

Structure: I’d suggest separating the conclusion in its own section. You could combine the results with discussion or leave the discussion part in a separate section- I’d recommend the former.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The authors would like to sincerely thank you and respected reviewers for the accurate review and give critical insight and extremely helpful comments. We have done our best to revise the manuscript according to the comments, and we hope that the revision is acceptable to you and the reviewers. We should note that all New additions/modifications inside the manuscript's text are presented in GREEN color. The point-by-point responses to the reviewers' comments are also presented in the attached file.

Thanks for the suggestion which enriched the research even more. Revisions were performed throughout the text. Changes are highlighted in Green.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This work is interesting and impressive. However, there are salient issues that needs to be improved for the wholesomeness of this manuscript. The authors should find attached an annotated version of the manuscript for corrections.

Abstract

The methodology is not clearly written. The conclusion and recommendation regarding the study is missing.

Introduction

• Poor paragraphing is observed
• The authors failed to review previous studies on the use of flexible voltaic systems and identify the research gap to be filled by this study. The novelty of this work is not clearly stated.

Materials and methods

• There is need to improve various parts for better understanding of readers and repeatability of this study (see the attached document).
• The procedure for the sensitivity analysis is missing. There are two different sensitivity analyses carried out in this work. Procedure for both is lacking. Kindly differentiate the difference between them.
• There is need to clarify the last sentence regarding maximum performance (see the attached).
• Authors did not include the procedure for the optimization of FF. The ranges of the values of FF to be optimized given and the optimized values must be mentioned via the use of Taguchi method.

Results

• The Taguchi and RsM results (experimental and predicted values), statistical parameters and their values are missing in the manuscript. There should be at least two Tables and four Figures to show the results from Taguchi and RsM.
• Obtained results are not compared with existing studies to validate the level of accuracy and correctness of the obtained results.
• Discussion should be separated from conclusions. The conclusion section is a separate entity.
• There is a lot of missing information in terms of values, clarity, Tables and Figures that are missing in the manuscript (see the attached).

General

The English language needs to be improved

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear,

The authors would like to sincerely thank you and respected reviewers for the accurate review and give critical insight and extremely helpful comments. We have done our best to revise the manuscript according to the comments, and we hope that the revision is acceptable to you and the reviewers. We should note that all New additions/modifications inside the manuscript's text are presented in GREEN color. The point-by-point responses to the reviewers' comments are also presented in the attached file.

Kind regards,

Professor, G. Najafi

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Tel: 00989123664393

Fax: 0098(21) 48292200

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Work done should be made more clearer

Some more latest references should be taken and paper needs revision by authors

Author Response

Dear,

The authors would like to sincerely thank you and respected reviewers for the accurate review and give critical insight and extremely helpful comments. We have done our best to revise the manuscript according to the comments, and we hope that the revision is acceptable to you and the reviewers. We should note that all New additions/modifications inside the manuscript's text are presented in GREEN color. The point-by-point responses to the reviewers' comments are also presented in the attached file.

Thanks for the suggestion which enriched the research even more. Revisions were performed throughout the text. Changes are highlighted in green.

 

Kind regards,

Professor, G. Najafi

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Tel: 00989123664393

Fax: 0098(21) 48292200

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript with ID sustainability-1556525 entitled “Flexible Photovoltaic System on Non-Conventional Surfaces: A Techno-Economic Analysis” proposed elastic solar panels assisted by flexible photovoltaic systems (FPVS) were developed, fabricated, and analysed on 1 m2. Overall, the idea and the introduced method sound interesting and feasible. The contributions and conclusion are supported by the achieved results. A flexible structure on a flat, hemispherical, and cylindrical substrate was studied in real terms. In the LabVIEW application, warm and dry climate data is recognized and transmitted online. However, the reviewer noticed some minor issues, which will improve the quality of the manuscript further.

There are typos in this paper, for example, "FPVS" in the fourth line of the second paragraph of the introduction should be "FOVs"; the "BIPV" should be BPV. IRR and NPV are not abbreviated first. The authors are suggested to search for other similar mistakes throughout the manuscript and rectify all.

The abstract is quite long, which could be shortened to make it precise and more attractive to the readers.

The term flexible photovoltaic systems (FPVS) appears several times in the paper, and the abbreviation FPVs should be used from the second time.

The reviewer thinks that contribution 1 and 2 are similar, which could somehow be merged to make a solid point.

The quality and fonts of labels in Figure 6 A&B should be improved.

The Add lables in Figure 1 and improve font size of the in Figure 1 is to improve visibility, which should be consistent with suggested font size of the journal.

It is strongly recommended to move all the figures shown in “references” section to their accompanying text description, for reader’s convenience.

 

Author Response

Dear,

The authors would like to sincerely thank you and respected reviewers for the accurate review and give critical insight and extremely helpful comments. We have done our best to revise the manuscript according to the comments, and we hope that the revision is acceptable to you and the reviewers. We should note that all New additions/modifications inside the manuscript's text are presented in GREEN color. The point-by-point responses to the reviewers' comments are also presented as follows.

Thanks for the suggestion which enriched the research even more. Shapes were modified. Labels added. The tables have been revised. Revisions were performed throughout the text. Changes are highlighted in green.

Best Regards

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Please remove the added content from lines 426 - 434 to the discussion section. Please compare and contrast the cited results with your results. 

The conclusion needs a significant update. Please rewrite the conclusion- see my previous comment in the first round on this.

Furthermore, the quality of the figures should/can be improved to make them more readable. Please see Figure 6 for example.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thanks for your positive comment. the manuscript revision was performed carefully. lines 426 - 434 were deleted and the conclusion section was revised again with your guidance. The figures were modified to the highest quality.

Regards

Reviewer 2 Report

The corrections highlighted in the attached documents (annotated version of the manuscript and Ms word) are not addressed at all. The authors are to address these to improve the quality of the manuscript. Previous studies related to this are not reviewed presenting this study as the first of its kind. There are issues with the methodology and questions are being asked which the authors failed to address. The results are not compared with previous studies to ascertain the quality of results obtained. Some results are missing which are crucial to the quality of these studies.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

The authors re-read your letter and tried to revise the sections as much as possible. To clear up any doubts about references, the Conclusions section has been removed and rewritten. I hope it is acceptable. The attached file also shows the complete analysis of the project under Taguchi and RSM. I really appreciate your support in this matter.

Best Regrards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Nil

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thanks for your positive comment. The text of the article has been slightly modified to improve the scientific language and is highlighted in blue.

Best Regards

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

The conclusion section should mention major result(s), if any. The focus should be on concluding the outcomes of the work, recommendations and future work.

Author Response

Dear

The conclusion section was rewritten to report on major results. Changes are highlighted in blue to confirm your comments.

Regards

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have not addressed the corrections necessary to improve this manuscript as highlighted in the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear

Thanks to the dear reviews and the editor of the article, the authors believe that the article is of good quality. The attached file provides a research path and more in-depth information. The revised sections of the article are highlighted in blue.

Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 4

Reviewer 2 Report

Satisfied.