Nelson SommerfeldtKTH Royal Institute of Technology | KTH · Department of Energy Technology (EGI)
Nelson Sommerfeldt
Doctor of Engineering
About
25
Publications
8,810
Reads
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349
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
My work focuses on the way energy is used and produced in built environment, but with a very wide scope. In the narrow, we are working on new PV/thermal hybrid collectors to couple with ground source heat pumps. In the wide, we are working on developing urban energy models that can help support energy business, policies, and further research. Most of all, I want to help individuals find good information about how they can make the best possible decisions towards sustainability.
Additional affiliations
March 2020 - March 2022
Position
- Visiting Scholar
Description
- I will collaborate with the Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology research group headed by Prof. Joshua Pearce, to support energy systems modelling targeted at Michigan's Upper Peninsula. A key focus will be community energy modeling to help curb energy costs and support the energy transition.
March 2020 - March 2022
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Researching the information channels potential prosumers use to learn about solar PV systems for their homes, and developing novel communication methods to reduce information asymmetry in the market
March 2013 - present
Education
March 2013 - January 2020
August 2010 - June 2012
September 2000 - December 2004
Publications
Publications (25)
The increased prevalence of photovoltaic (PV) self-consumption policies across Europe and the world place an increased importance on accurate predictions for life-cycle costing during the planning phase. This study presents several machine learning and regression models for predicting self-consumption, trained on a variety of datasets from Sweden....
Heat pumps and water tanks can be used to increase PV self-consumption in buildings without any additional equipment, but there is sometimes a lack of economic incentives to maximize it that limits economic gains. Therefore, pricing conditions need to change in order to make self-consumption strategies more interesting for prosumers. This study aim...
The development of 100% renewable electricity (RE) systems play a pivotal role in ensuring climate stability. Many municipalities blessed with wealth, an educated and progressive citizenry, and large RE resources, have already reached 100% RE generation. Impoverished municipalities in unwelcoming environments both politically and climatically (e.g....
Final report for the project "Prosumer-Centric Communication for Solar PV Diffusion" funded by the Swedish Energy Agency via the Design for Energy Efficiency Lifestyles program (project number 48103-1).
Buildings provide an ideal platform for solar photovoltaics (PV) towards sustainable development goals, and the decision to invest in PV lies predominantly with building owners. Information delivery is critical for the diffusion of innovations, and this study aims to improve the quality of information for household PV investors in Sweden. A User Jo...
The price for solar photovoltaic (PV) generation fed into the network from a prosumer system is often lower than the price earned with self-consumption, thereby making it a critical input to the economic analysis. This study aims to create a self-consumption model that can be applied during the planning phase of a residential PV system in Sweden, w...
With the increasing amount of building renovations in Austria, the potential increases for replacing conventional national gas heating systems with heat pumps (HP) and thereby reduce CO2 emissions particularly when combined with solar photovoltaics (PV). The Austrian subsidization scheme for HP and PV systems are different for every state, creating...
Given the need for decarbonization of the heating sector and the acute need of a replacement for propane in the U.S. Upper Midwest, this study quantifies the techno-economic characteristics of sustainable heating electrification in isolated rural, residential buildings in cold climates without natural gas supply. Archetypal buildings are modeled un...
This paper describes the first phase of an applied project to improve information delivery to Swedish consumers and nudge them towards adoption of PV. The objective of this study is to identify relevant behavioural techniques for randomized field trials of solar PV investment. The trials will be conducted via web-based commercial tools, their own g...
![System Advisor Model Version 2020.2.29 [53] simulation parameters,...](publication/349070083/figure/tbl2/AS:988222825967619@1612622090753/System-Advisor-Model-Version-2020229-53-simulation-parameters-inputs-and-sources_Q320.jpg)
Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is now a profitable method to decarbonize the grid, but if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided, emissions from transportation and heating must also decarbonize. One approach to renewable heating is leveraging improvements in PV with heat pumps (HPs). To determine the potential for PV+HP systems in norther...
![Figure 2 -Electricity supply by source and domestic demand [4]](profile/Nelson-Sommerfeldt/publication/339738481/figure/fig1/AS:865995740696576@1583480882103/Electricity-supply-by-source-and-domestic-demand-4_Q320.jpg)
![Figure 3 -Historical Nord Pool Spot prices (in 2018 SEK) [22]](profile/Nelson-Sommerfeldt/publication/339738481/figure/fig2/AS:865995740700672@1583480882133/Historical-Nord-Pool-Spot-prices-in-2018-SEK-22_Q320.jpg)
In the transition towards a sustainable energy system, building mounted solar photovoltaics (PV) have unique benefits; they require no additional land and the energy is generated directly at load centers. Within residential buildings, multi-family homes (MFH) are particularly interesting because of the economies of scale and their greater potential...
The electrification of buildings is a promising pathway to the decarbonization of cities. This is a parametric study of the technical and economic performance of ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems with series connected solar PV/thermal (PVT) collectors. The focus is on multi-family houses (MFH) in the heating dominated climate of Sweden, where...
As the demand for sustainable energy technologies grows, solar photovoltaics (PV) and heat pumps are increasingly being used in buildings. Hybrid PV-thermal (PVT) collectors have been researched for decades, but have not yet had success in the market. This study combines PVT and ground source heat pumps (GSHP) in a series connection for a multi-fam...
The primary objective of this research is to identify the technical and economic potential of PVT integration into multi-family house GSHP systems with borehole energy storage. This is achieved through a comprehensive technology review, dynamic complete systems modeling, construction of a detailed test site, and a qualitative assessment of commerci...
Solar heat pump systems (SHPs) have been investigated for several decades and have been proven to increase the share of renewable energy and reduce electric energy demand in residential heating applications. Many review articles have been published on the subject, however literature discussing the techno-economics of different solar technologies (t...
The market for solar photovoltaic systems is growing rapidly into a mature industry, while at the same time policies which have spurred the growth (e.g. feed-in tariffs or net metering) are beginning to fade away. These policies made techno-economic studies relatively simple for engineers, analysts, and owners, however investing in a deregulated ma...
Part One in this two part paper identified Monte Carlo analysis as an improved approach over traditional deterministic techno-economic methods for solar PV prosumers in deregulated markets. In this paper a novel Monte Carlo methodology is described and demonstrated through a case study for the Swedish residential sector, which includes a review of...
Solar photovoltaic (PV) installations are growing at an exponential rate worldwide. This trend is also seen in Sweden, but with a 50 MW p market in 2015, it is only in its infancy. Solar energy has long been an interest of the Swedish public, and now that costs have declined to a point where it is competitive with the greater wholesale market, inte...
The financial benefits of a distributed electric generation facility cannot be calculated without an expectation of the electricity's market value. Prediction of long-term future prices is a difficult but mandatory task, which is often reduced to constant annual prices with steady annual growth rates. This study provides a methodology for predictin...
Projects
Projects (5)
This project aims to democratize distributed energy systems design and empower building owners with trustworthy information for holistic analysis of sustainable technologies. It will be accomplished through the creation of an open-source development community for building energy supply models at an urban scale, with a specific focus of adoption by Swedish municipalities and energy companies. The vision is to apply the models in online maps, like existing solar maps, and provide
recommendations on a selection of sustainable technologies – solar photovoltaics, electric vehicles and chargers, batteries, and heat pumps. The project will have impact on multiple levels and stakeholders, and the open-source approach aims to encourage
collaboration and contribution from researchers, commercialization by firms, adoption by municipalities, and most importantly, to ensure that homeowners can have the greatest impact on sustainable and secure energy supply with their limited budget.
The goal of this project is to develop the most effective techniques from behavioral economics to create a scalable, prosumer-centric communications framework. A design thinking approach will be used to identify the needs and barriers from multiple stakeholder’s viewpoints, followed by an agile prototyping phase to test ideas and techniques. The resulting framework aims to deliver a scalable method of communication that provides better heuristics to users for complex decision making while nudging them towards sustainable choices and greater PV adoption.
Advance in the development of an integrated heating, cooling and electricity solution for European buildings, using solar photovoltaic-thermal collectors and ground source heat pumps.
