The island of Bonaire serves as the integration context for the chosen engineering products. Bonaire is an island located in the Carribean Sea off the shore of Venezuela. It is one island out of four which together form the Netherlands Antilles. The islands area covers approximately 294 square kilometers. Roughly 19.000 people form the permanent population of the island. Bonaires climate is warm, dry and windy. The average temperature is 27,5 degrees Celsius. [1] Bonaires inhabitants rely economically on the tourism sector, which is the largest income deployer. [4] The GDP per capita is around 21.000 US Dollar. [6] An intact reef of the shore of Bonaire is one of the most beautiful spots fur scuba diving and draws attention to the little island. In the past roughly one third of the energy production relied on wind the two other thirds were produced by diesel and heavy fuel generators. Energy production by solar panels played a minor role.[5] Although Bonaire invested heavily in wind energy, also other renewable energy sources are available. [2]
To ensure that the environment stays in a good condition and to support a sustainable development in the tourism sector the island needs an environmental friendly energy supply. Looking on the former energy supply pattern, which was mainly relying on fossil fuels, the energy supply needed a change both to reduce risks such as pollution that stem from it and to reduce dependency to the oil market. Bonaire underwent a change which was initiated by investing in wind energy. But other renewable energy sources are available. Besides that, the isolated situation calls for an autark energy solution. Nevertheless, ensuring a reliable energy supply for the islands population and their economic ventures plays a crucial role in the microeconomy of Bonaire, but the maintenance of any proposed energy solution for the island has to be economically feasible with the islands inhabitants budget.
Windturbines, solar equipped rooftops and sewer systems with additional biogas plants form the proposed energy creating sources and are the engineering solution for this island that have to be connected. The interfaces between all of these plants is energy. Besides the sewer system ensures that the seewage does not harm the reefs off shore, but also supplies residues for biogas plants. [3] As a parameter to ensure and measure economic feasibility, the costs of the buildings and maintenance operations come into play. A certain percentage of the annual GDP of the population can serve as a budget for maintenance. Another crucial parameter for the energy system for Bonair is availability, which draws its importance from the isolation of the island from mainland energy grids and therefore the dependency on local energy suppliers. As a third parameter, to ensure the ecofriendlyness of the energy creating products, the emited co2 is chosen.
The following subpages describe on the one hand the proposed engineering solutions for the integrated ecofriendly energy system for Bonaire such as wind turbines, solar roofs, sewer systems and biogas plants and on the other hand deliver different scenarios of maintenance strategies that could be pursued by the islands inhabitants to keep the proposed system available, spending a reasonable budget. This is done by showing the results from a multicriteria optimization using the described parameters.
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[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonaire
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/bonaire-goes-renewable-energy-2015-1?IR=T
[3] https://www.infobonaire.com/bonaires-wastewater-treatment-system-reaches-a-milestone/
[4] http://www.globalislands.net/userfiles/bonaire_2.pdf
[5] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy15osti/64119.pdf
[6] https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2017/40/gdp-caribbean-netherlands-increased-in-2015
Figures
[Left] https://pixabay.com/de/meer-karibik-bonaire-ozean-t%C3%BCrkis-2030919/
[Right] https://pixabay.com/de/tauchen-unterwasser-schiffswrack-2317126/
All sources last viewed 2018-02-12.