There is no doubt that solar PV can save households money on energy bills. Assisting this is the Feed-in Tariff, which allows domestic solar PV owners to offset the capital cost of the installation. The shortfall in this arrangement, however, is that solar PV generates most of its electricity when the typical household is using the least. If the electricity could be stored for use on site, could further savings be made? This body of research investigates the financial viability of incorporating electricity storage in a generating household and if the installation costs can be offset in a shorter timescale. Christian Sayer and Mike George explain ...
This is a five page article. First published in december 2013
Extract:
With this in mind, the system used in this study will be capped at 20% discharge, meaning the 18kWh system, in reality, only supplies 14.4kWh. The solar PV system efficiency is further decreased when passed through the inverter or battery management system. A factor of 0.9 (90%) is applied to the generated electricity, to account for losses associated with solar PV wiring and DC/AC inverter. Finally, all loads discharged from the battery will be 60% of what went in, to reflect the losses observed by the real-life example by Mr. Southall.
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