C++ Solar Panel Installation Cost Calculator Program

You are to provide a software program that will calculate the cost of installing a flat-panel photovoltaic (“solar cell”) power system for residential home use in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Only material costs are considered; labor, taxes and profit margin have been neglected, as have issues concerning building codes and permits. While the numbers given in the attached document derive from published figures and quoted prices, their veracity is not guaranteed. Certain simplifying assumptions have been made. All requirements and data for this project are listen in the attached document and must be followed. The job is a matter of implementing the code and less of creating an algorithm. Algorithm development should proceed as follows: • Develop a function that obtains the following input values from the user: o Daily energy requirements (kWh). o Individual component costs7. Note that since the function needs to return many values to the caller, pass by reference is required here to update the caller’s variables directly. 6 For the sake of convenience, we will assume that the number of hours of daylight are the same for each month. 7 The components are (i) the solar panels (per square meter); (ii) the power inverters; and (iii) the batteries. • Develop a function (of type double), called fillInInsolation, that fills in the insolation matrix, and determines the smallest daily insolation value which is returned through the function name (NB. In main, you should have a double variable insolDayMin to which the returned value can be assigned). The function should have parameters to accept from main the address of the matrix and its relevant row dimension. This function makes use of another function, called dailyInsolation to fill in each element of a single row with data values computed by using )(hfS . The parameters of dailyInsolation should consist of a “pointer” that shall accept the address of each row, that is treated as an array, from fillInInsolation. Another parameter is used to accept the number of elements in the “array”. Note that it is not necessary to pass the address to the first element of the row, nor have the number of elements correspond to the total number of elements in the row, since only a part of the array need be filled in (HINT: only 12 hours of daylight have been assumed). Use the pointer, and pointer arithmetic, to increment the pointer through the array. Also determine the daily insolation (HINT: add up the elements as they are being stored in the array), and return this value to fillInInsolation. • Within main, extract the largest insolation value from the matrix using a call to an appropriate search function. The largest insolation value corresponds to the brightest hour of the year, when the photovoltaic system produces far more power than specified. (NB. In main, you should have a double variable insolHourMax and a pointer to it for this datum.) • In the main function: o Make the appropriate calls to determine the values for insolDayMin and insolHourMax. o Calculate the solar panel area from insolDayMin and any other needed values. Here you will calculate the solar panel area needed to supply the given daily energy requirement8. Now, recall that you need to convert DC to AC and that there is an inverter efficiency associated with this process. Increase the above calculated area to account for this. (NB. In main, you should have a double variable area for this datum.) o From insolHourMax and area, determine9 the minimum number of power inverters needed to transform the current from DC to AC. (HINT: this is an integer – round up). o Now calculate the total cost of the solar power system. You are to have just enough batteries to store at least one full day’s energy use. (HINT: this is an integer – round up). Print the final result to the screen. Your print statement should be meaningful. (HINT: not just a number).