scholarly journals Shared Solar and Battery Storage Configuration Effectiveness for Reducing the Grid Reliance of Apartment Complexes

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 4820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moiz Masood Syed ◽  
Gregory M. Morrison ◽  
James Darbyshire

More than 2 million houses in Australia have installed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems; however, apartment buildings have adopted a low percentage of solar PV and battery storage installations. Given that grid usage reduction through PV and battery storage is a primary objective in most residential buildings, apartments have not yet fully benefited from installations of such systems. This research presents shared microgrid configurations for three apartment buildings with PV and battery storage and evaluates the reduction in grid electricity usage by analyzing self-sufficiency. The results reveal that the three studied sites at White Gum Valley achieved an overall self-sufficiency of more than 60%. Owing to the infancy of the shared solar and battery storage market for apartment complexes and lack of available data, this study fills the research gap by presenting preliminary quantitative findings from implementation in apartment buildings.

Author(s):  
Rakesh Dalal ◽  
Kamal Bansal ◽  
Sapan Thapar

Rooftop solar photovoltaic(PV) installation in India have increased in last decade because of the flat 40 percent subsidy extended for rooftop solar PV systems (3 kWp and below) by the Indian government under the solar rooftop scheme. From the residential building owner's perspective, solar PV is competitive when it can produce electricity at a cost less than or equal grid electricity price, a condition referred as “grid parity”. For assessing grid parity of 3 kWp and 2 kWp residential solar PV system, 15 states capital and 19 major cities were considered  for the RET screen simulation by using solar isolation, utility grid tariff, system cost and other economic parameters. 3 kWp and 2 kWp rooftop solar PV with and without subsidy scenarios were considered for simulation using RETscreen software. We estimate that without subsidy no state could achieve grid parity for 2kWp rooftop solar PV plant. However with 3 kWp rooftop solar PV plant only 5 states could achieve grid parity without subsidy and with government subsidy number of states increased to 7, yet wide spread parity for residential rooftop solar PV is still not achieved. We find that high installation costs, subsidized utility grid supply to low energy consumer and financing rates are major barriers to grid parity.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2727 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofiane Kichou ◽  
Nikolaos Skandalos ◽  
Petr Wolf

This paper reports on the electrical performance of two bloc-of-flats buildings located in Prague, Czech Republic. Measured data of electrical consumption were used to investigate the effect of photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage system (BESS) systems on the overlap between generation and demand. Different PV array configurations and battery storage capacities were considered. Detailed solar analysis was carried out to analyze the solar potential of the building and to assess the PV electricity production. The evaluation of the building performance was done through MATLAB simulations based on one-year monitored data. The simulation results were used for the calculation of the load matching indices: namely, the self-consumption and self-sufficiency. It was found that optimized array tilt and orientation angles can effectively contribute to a better adjustment between electricity demand and solar PV generation. The addition of a façade PV system increases significantly the PV generation and thus the load matching during winter months. Mismatch is further reduced by using the energy flexibility provided by the BESS. Depending on the PV size and BESS capacity, the self-consumption and the self-sufficiency of the building could increase from 55% to 100% and from 24% up to 68%, respectively.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1213 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Sayed ◽  
M. El-Shimy ◽  
M. El-Metwally ◽  
M. Elshahed

Recently, solar power generation is significantly contributed to growing renewable sources of electricity all over the world. The reliability and availability improvement of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems has become a critical area of interest for researchers. Reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM) is an engineering tool used to address operational and safety issues of systems. It aims to identify the weakest areas of a system which will improve the overall system reliability. In this paper, RAM analysis of grid-connected solar-PV system is presented. Elaborate RAM analysis of these systems is presented starting from the sub-assembly level to the subsystem level, then the overall system. Further, an improved Reliability Block Diagram is presented to estimate the RAM performance of seven practical grid-connected solar-PV systems. The required input data are obtained from worldwide databases of failures, and repair of various subassemblies comprising various meteorological conditions. A novel approach is also presented in order to estimate the best probability density function for each sub-assembly. The monitoring of the critical subassemblies of a PV system will increase the possibility not only for improving the availability of the system, but also to optimize the maintenance costs. Additionally, it will inform the operators about the status of the various subsystems of the system.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 1921 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Kavya Santhoshi ◽  
K. Mohana Sundaram ◽  
Sanjeevikumar Padmanaban ◽  
Jens Bo Holm-Nielsen ◽  
Prabhakaran K. K.

Solar Photovoltaic (PV) systems have been in use predominantly since the last decade. Inverter fed PV grid topologies are being used prominently to meet power requirements and to insert renewable forms of energy into power grids. At present, coping with growing electricity demands is a major challenge. This paper presents a detailed review of topological advancements in PV-Grid Tied Inverters along with the advantages, disadvantages and main features of each. The different types of inverters used in the literature in this context are presented. Reactive power is one of the ancillary services provided by PV. It is recommended that reactive power from the inverter to grid be injected for reactive power compensation in localized networks. This practice is being implemented in many countries, and researchers have been trying to find an optimal way of injecting reactive power into grids considering grid codes and requirements. Keeping in mind the importance of grid codes and standards, a review of grid integration, the popular configurations available in literature, Synchronization methods and standards is presented, citing the key features of each kind. For successful integration with a grid, coordination between the support devices used for reactive power compensation and their optimal reactive power capacity is important for stability in grid power. Hence, the most important and recommended intelligent algorithms for the optimization and proper coordination are peer reviewed and presented. Thus, an overview of Solar PV energy-fed inverters connected to the grid is presented in this paper, which can serve as a guide for researchers and policymakers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 10060
Author(s):  
Ammar Hamoud Ahmad Dehwah ◽  
Muhammad Asif ◽  
Ismail Mohammad Budaiwi ◽  
Adel Alshibani

The application of renewable energy has been an integral part of the sustainability drive in the building sector and solar photovoltaic (PV) is one of the most effective technologies in this respect. The present study aims to investigate the prospects of solar PV in residential buildings in the hot–humid climatic conditions. The study discusses the utilization of building roofs for the application of PV in terms of potential hurdles and utilization factor (UF). Technical performance of PV systems has also been investigated in terms of power output as well as the energy saved as a result of the shading impact of panels for two types of residential units, apartments and villas. Investigation of 70 sample residential buildings reveals the average UF of 0.21 and 0.28 for apartments and villas, respectively. For the case study of apartment and villa residential units, roof UF has been found to be 13% and 15% with a respective PV output of 6079 kWh/year and 6162 kWh/year. Potential PV output at the city level has also been estimated. A sensitivity analysis has been conducted to evaluate the impact of various cost and design parameters on the viability of PV systems.


2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Firdaus Muhammad Sukki ◽  
Roberto Ramirez Iniguez ◽  
Scott G. Mcmeekin ◽  
Brian G. Stewart ◽  
Barry Clive

Solar energy has become a matter of global attention in the past few years. This paper explores the use and benefit of solar concentrators in the solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. First, a short literature review of previous research on the usage of solar concentrators in improving solar PV system performance and reducing the cost of implementation is presented. This is followed by an overview of SolarBrane, an example of a Building Integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system which uses an optical concentrator in the solar PV design. An optimised design of the SolarBrane is also discussed afterwards. A financial benefit study is conducted to compare the average return of investment of using the optimised SolarBrane and traditional solar PV installed in Malaysia’s environment. SolarBrane has proven to be a good alternative to achieve costeffective solar PV system. The financial analysis simulated under the new Malaysian Feed–In Tariff scheme indicates that the optimised SolarBrane could potentially reduce the initial cost of implementation by 40% and generate higher return, close to 20%, when compared to traditional solar PV systems. Key words: Solar photovoltaic; solar concentrator; solarBrane; dielectric totally internally reflecting concentrator; financial analysis


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minhyun LEE ◽  
Taehoon HONG ◽  
Choongwan KOO ◽  
Chan-Joong KIM

Despite the steady growth and price reductions of solar photovoltaic (PV) market in the United States (U.S.), the solar PV market still depends on financial support and incentives due to its high initial investment cost. Therefore, this study aimed to conduct a break-even analysis and impact analysis of residential solar PV systems by state in the U.S., focused on state solar incentives. Three indexes (i.e., net present value, profitability index (PI) and payback period) were used to evaluate the investment value of the residential solar PV systems considering state solar incentives. Furthermore, PI increase ratio was used to analyze the impact of state solar incentives on the economic feasibility of the residential solar PV systems in each state. As a result, it was found that 18 of the 51 target cities have reached the break-even point and seven of the 51 target cities showed great improvement of the economic feasibility of solar PV systems in the U.S. due to excellent state solar incentives. The results of this study can help policy makers to evaluate and compare the economic impacts of the residential solar PV systems by state in the U.S.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Atul Kumar1 ◽  
Srivastava Manish2

Electricity generation around the world is mainly produced by using non-renewable energy sources especially in the commercial buildings. However, Rooftop solar Photovoltaic (PV) system produced a significant impact on environmental and economical benefits in comparison to the conventional energy sources, thus contributing to sustainable development. Such PV’s system encourages the production of electricity without greenhouse gas emissions that leads to a clean alternative to fossil fuels and economic prosperity even in less developed areas. However, efficiency of rooftop solar PV systems depends on many factors, the dominant being geographical (latitude, longitude, and solar intensity), environmental (temperature, wind, humidity, pollution, dust, rain, etc.) and the type of PV (from raw material extraction and procurement, to manufacturing, disposal, and/or recycling) used. During the feasibility analysis of the environment, geographical conditions are keep in well consideration, but the pollution level of the city is always overlooked, which significantly influences the performance of the PV installations.           Therefore, this research work focused on the performance of rooftop solar PV installed in one of the most polluted city in India. Here, the loss in power generation of rooftop solar PV has been studied for the effect of deposited dust particles, wind velocity before and after the cleaning of the panels. The actual data has been utilized for the calculation of the energy efficiency and power output of the PV systems. According to the results, it has been concluded that dust deposition, wind speed and pollution level in city significantly reduces the efficiency of solar photovoltaic panel. Hence, an overview of social and environmental impacts of PV technologies is presented in this paper along with potential benefits and pitfalls.


The need to electrify all rural areas in India is quite compelling. However, the focus has now shifted from traditional fuel-based systems to generate electricity to renewable sources for energy generation. Though there are subsidies and policies that encourage the use of solar Photovoltaic (PV) systems, there is a need for an appropriate framework. This framework could not only offer substantial directions but it would also act as grounds to enhance rural electrification in India using solar PVs. From this perspective, the current research attempts to structure an innovative framework for solar PV system that could facilitate rural electrification in India. In particular, the district of Damoh in Madhya Pradesh was chosen as there are many villages without electricity in this district. PVsyst software was utilized to simulate the outcomes that included mathematical models and diverse components based on PV, for simulation. Three designs were developed to facilitate the simulation. These included; PVs linked with microgrid devoid of battery, individual PV systems without microgrid link and solar PVs linked to microgrid with battey. The framework for rural electrification using solar PVs will offer policy makers with insights with regards to implementing PV systems. It will also offer inputs as to the feasibility of implementing a specific system on several parameters. These would comprise of; number of households within a village, detached households etc. Nonetheless, research in future is also warranted to explore the scope for other sources of renewable energy.


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