The Effects Of Battery Storage And Load Management On Photovoltaic Self-Consumption

Despite the rapid growth of the photovoltaic (PV) industry, most of the energy demand in the United States is supplied by fossil fuel power plants. One of the main reasons for this is that PV is non-dispatchable. Because of this, utilities must maintain reliable grid infrastructure for times when PV is not available but there is still demand. This leads to electricity infrastructure going unutilized much of the time.The non-dispatchable nature of PV limits the amount of PV that can be connected to the grid. One remedy for this limit is to add energy storage to PV systems, or to shift deferrable loads from times of peak electricity demand to times when the sun is shining. Energy storage and load shifting allow more loads to be met locally rather than importing energy from the grid, or exporting excess PV production to the grid. This process is known as self-consumption. This study compares the levels of self-consumption in a PV self-consumption system with and without the use of battery-based energy storage. It also compares four different load shifting load profiles against a baseline load profile without load shifting.