Abstract
This paper investigates a comparative study for practical optimal sizing of rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage systems (BESSs) for grid-connected houses (GCHs) by considering flat and time-of-use (TOU) electricity rate options. Two system configurations, PV only and PV-BESS, were optimally sized by minimizing the net present cost of electricity for four options of electricity rates. A practical model was developed by considering grid constraints, daily supply of charge of electricity, salvation value and degradation of PV and BESS, actual annual data of load and solar, and current market price of components. A rule-based energy management system was examined for GCHs to control the power flow among PV, BESS, load, and grid. Various sensitivity analyses are presented to examine the impacts of grid constraint and electricity rates on the cost of electricity and the sizes of the components. Although the capacity optimization model is generally developed for any case study, a grid-connected house in Australia is considered as the case system in this paper. It is found that the TOU-Flat option for the PV-BESS configuration achieved the lowest NPC compared to other configuration and options. The optimal capacities of rooftop PV and BESS were obtained as 9 kW and 6 kWh, respectively, for the PV-BESS configuration with TOU-Flat according to two performance metrices: net present cost and cost of electricity.