energies-logo

Journal Browser

Journal Browser

Analysis of Solar Photovoltaic Self-Consumption

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A2: Solar Energy and Photovoltaic Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2021) | Viewed by 21481

Special Issue Editor

Energy Institute, The Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London, London, UK
Interests: data science; energy; consumption; demand; smart meter; solar; photovoltaic; self-consumption; building; residential; domestic

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to extend an invitation to all colleagues who would like to submit their research papers to the Special Issue of Energies on “Analysis of Solar Photovoltaic Self-Consumption”.

As solar photovoltaics (PV) enters a “post-subsidy era” in a growing number of countries, solar self-consumption (rather than export to the grid) has risen in importance as a primary driver of adoption of PV and a significant factor in the adoption of related technologies, such as home battery systems, electric vehicles and peer-to-peer energy trading.

Nonetheless, despite considerable numbers of prosumer households worldwide, there is a remarkable lack of understanding about self-consumption and a general absence of good-quality data on which to base scientific research.

The aim of this Special Issue is to address this gap and present state-of-the-art research and analysis in the field of solar self-consumption. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

  • Empirical analysis of solar self-consumption;
  • Impacts of technologies on self-consumption such as batteries, home energy management systems, etc.;
  • Demand scheduling and optimisation for improved self-consumption;
  • Models to predict/estimate generation and self-consumption and their validation;
  • Data collection solutions for embedded generation and self-consumption;
  • Smart meters and self-consumption;
  • Community energy self-consumption and peer-to-peer energy trading;
  • Behavioural and social factors of self-consumption;
  • Self-consumption and its influence on PV adoption;
  • Self-consumption, self-sufficiency and grid-defection;
  • Impact of self-consumption on power grids;
  • Information feedback and self-consumption.

Dr. Eoghan McKenna
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • self-consumption
  • solar
  • photovoltaics
  • PV
  • technology adoption
  • smart meter
  • prosumer
  • household
  • self-sufficiency
  • community energy

Published Papers (6 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

30 pages, 6462 KiB  
Article
Preliminarily Screening Geographical Hotspots for New Rooftop PV Installation: A Case Study in Thailand
by Wichsinee Wibulpolprasert, Umnouy Ponsukcharoen, Siripha Junlakarn and Sopitsuda Tongsopit
Energies 2021, 14(11), 3329; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14113329 - 05 Jun 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1901
Abstract
As rooftop PV deployment accelerates around the world, forecasts of rooftop PV penetration by geographical region and customer group are essential to guide policy and decision-making by utilities. However, most state-of-the-art forecasting tools require detailed data that are often unavailable for developing countries. [...] Read more.
As rooftop PV deployment accelerates around the world, forecasts of rooftop PV penetration by geographical region and customer group are essential to guide policy and decision-making by utilities. However, most state-of-the-art forecasting tools require detailed data that are often unavailable for developing countries. A simplified analytical tool with limited data is proposed to preliminarily identify the rooftop PV “hotspots”—that is, geographical areas where many new investments into rooftop PV investments are likely to occur. The tool combines the assessment of financial and technical indicator in form of the optimal PV-to-load ratio indicating the maximum penetration of solar PV, and the capital-to-expenditure ratio indicating the ease of such investment. Using Thailand as a case study, the results from this tool show that under the self-consumption and net-billing scheme, the Northern and Northeastern regions are marked as the potential hotspots where the utility’s impact will be realized early or strongly or both. The average LCOE and self-consumption level for all customer classes and regions are in the range of 0.084–0.112 USD/kWh and 41.33–73.13% of PV production, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Analysis of Solar Photovoltaic Self-Consumption)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

24 pages, 6005 KiB  
Article
Self-Consumption and Self-Sufficiency in Photovoltaic Systems: Effect of Grid Limitation and Storage Installation
by Alessandro Ciocia, Angela Amato, Paolo Di Leo, Stefania Fichera, Gabriele Malgaroli, Filippo Spertino and Slavka Tzanova
Energies 2021, 14(6), 1591; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14061591 - 12 Mar 2021
Cited by 42 | Viewed by 5433
Abstract
This paper presents a methodology to maximize the self-sufficiency or cost-effectiveness of grid-connected prosumers by optimizing the sizes of photovoltaic (PV) systems and electrochemical batteries. In the optimal sizing procedure, a limitation on the maximum injection in the grid can affect the energy [...] Read more.
This paper presents a methodology to maximize the self-sufficiency or cost-effectiveness of grid-connected prosumers by optimizing the sizes of photovoltaic (PV) systems and electrochemical batteries. In the optimal sizing procedure, a limitation on the maximum injection in the grid can affect the energy flows, the economic effectiveness of the investments, and thus the sizing results. After the explanation of the procedure, a case study is presented, and a parametric analysis of the effect of possible injection limits is shown. The procedure is applied to size plants for an Italian domestic prosumer, whose electric load profile was measured for a year. A software program developed using the proposed methodology is also briefly presented. It is used for both research and educational purposes, both in laboratory classes and in remote lessons. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Analysis of Solar Photovoltaic Self-Consumption)
Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 907 KiB  
Article
Effect of Sampling Rate on Photovoltaic Self-Consumption in Load Shifting Simulations
by Philippe Voinov, Patrick Huber, Alberto Calatroni, Andreas Rumsch and Andrew Paice
Energies 2020, 13(20), 5393; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13205393 - 15 Oct 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4188
Abstract
Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) capacity is increasing and is currently estimated to account for 3.0% of worldwide energy generation. One strategy to balance fluctuating PV power is to incentivize self-consumption by shifting certain loads. The potential improvement in the amount of self-consumption is usually [...] Read more.
Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) capacity is increasing and is currently estimated to account for 3.0% of worldwide energy generation. One strategy to balance fluctuating PV power is to incentivize self-consumption by shifting certain loads. The potential improvement in the amount of self-consumption is usually estimated using smart meter and PV production data. Smart meter data are usually available only at sampling frequences far below the Nyquist limit. In this paper we investigate how this insufficient sampling rate affects the estimated self-consumption potential of shiftable household appliances (washing machines, tumble dryers and dishwashers). We base our analyses on measured consumption data from 16 households in the UK and corresponding PV data. We found that the simulated results have a marked dependence on the data sampling rate. The amount of self-consumed energy estimated with data sampled every 10 min was overestimated by 30–40% compared to estimations using data with 1 min sampling rate. We therefore recommend to take this factor into account when making predictions on the impact of appliance load shifting on the rate of self-consumption. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Analysis of Solar Photovoltaic Self-Consumption)
Show Figures

Figure 1

23 pages, 6846 KiB  
Article
Shared Solar and Battery Storage Configuration Effectiveness for Reducing the Grid Reliance of Apartment Complexes
by Moiz Masood Syed, Gregory M. Morrison and James Darbyshire
Energies 2020, 13(18), 4820; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13184820 - 15 Sep 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3272
Abstract
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 [...] Read more.
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. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Analysis of Solar Photovoltaic Self-Consumption)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

28 pages, 1993 KiB  
Article
Photovoltaic Solar Systems in Multi-Headquarter Institutions: A Technical Implementation in Northeastern Brazil
by Hélio Henrique Cunha Pinheiro, Neilton Fidélis da Silva, David Alves Castelo Branco and Márcio Giannini Pereira
Energies 2020, 13(10), 2659; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13102659 - 25 May 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3138
Abstract
The use of photovoltaic solar technology is increasingly widespread and consolidated worldwide, gaining significant interest in Brazil. Thanks to records of gradual photovoltaic system price decreases and the construction of legal frameworks favorable to their diffusion, urban and rural residential consumers, service companies, [...] Read more.
The use of photovoltaic solar technology is increasingly widespread and consolidated worldwide, gaining significant interest in Brazil. Thanks to records of gradual photovoltaic system price decreases and the construction of legal frameworks favorable to their diffusion, urban and rural residential consumers, service companies, industries, and the government are progressively adhering to the use of this technology. In this context, it is important that institutions and companies with multiheadquarters discern whether it is more advantageous, from both a technical and economic point of view, to disperse photovoltaic systems throughout all of their headquarters or to centralize them in the offices presenting the best energy efficiency. The present study aims at answering this question. To this end, indicators recorded in the Institute of Education Science and Technology (IFRN)-Solar Project implemented by the Rio Grande do Norte Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, in Brazil, where 2 MWp of photovoltaic solar energy are installed in 19 of its 22 headquarters, were evaluated. The PVWatts Software, energy measurements at the different plant installation locations and technical performance parameters recurrent in the literature, as well as the Discounted Payback Method were used herein. The results indicate that system centralization in the best-evaluated sites (7 campi) will, in 25 years, provide a 9.07% energy supply gain, a 112.96% financial gain, and a payback reduction of 8.9 years when compared to the alternative comprising generation unit dispersion throughout the 19 campi. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Analysis of Solar Photovoltaic Self-Consumption)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

46 pages, 8431 KiB  
Article
A Cost-Effective and Transferable Methodology for Rooftop PV Potential Assessment in Developing Countries
by Phuong Minh Khuong, Russell McKenna and Wolf Fichtner
Energies 2020, 13(10), 2501; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13102501 - 15 May 2020
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 2723
Abstract
The efficient uptake of decentralized solar rooftop photovoltaics (PV) is in some cases hindered by ineffective energy and political framework conditions. These may be based on inaccurate and uncertain potential assessments in the early development stage of the solar market. This paper develops [...] Read more.
The efficient uptake of decentralized solar rooftop photovoltaics (PV) is in some cases hindered by ineffective energy and political framework conditions. These may be based on inaccurate and uncertain potential assessments in the early development stage of the solar market. This paper develops a more accurate, cost-effective, and robust potential assessment for emerging and developing economies. Adjusting the module efficiency corresponding to regional and household conditions improves the output accuracy. The rooftop PV market changes are simulated regarding different input changes and policy designs, including changing the Feed-In Tariff (FIT), grid tariff, and technology development. In the case study, the market potential in Vietnam is estimated at 260–280 TWh/a and is clustered into six groups in priority order, in which Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh need the most policy focus. Changing the FIT from 8.83 to 9 Euro cent/kWh and using different regional FITs can activate an additional 16% of the market and lead to a possible 28 million Euro benefit. Increasing the grid tariff to 8.7 cents/kWh could activate the self-consumption model, and the self-sufficient market can be guaranteed in the case of CAPEX and OPEX being lower than 650 Euro/kWp. Future developments of the method should focus on combining this top-down method with detailed bottom-up approaches. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Analysis of Solar Photovoltaic Self-Consumption)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop