Self-Consumption of Electricity by Households, Effects of PV System Size and Battery Storage

Abstract

We present a study of the possible self-consumption of PV electricity by individual households. The study is based on electricity consumption time series data from 144 households in Ulm, Germany. PV power estimates using solar radiation data from satellite are used to calculate the instantaneous PV power self-consumption for each household under a number of scenarios. The results show that with a PV system producing 1/3 of the total annual electricity consumption, the self-consumption may reach 60-90% of the PV electricity while for a PV system producing the same annual energy as the consumption, the self-consumption is reduced to 20-40%. Adding battery storage may significantly increase PV self-consumption. For a PV system producing half the annual consumption, the percentage of self-consumption increases from 40-60% to 70-85%, with a storage size of 3kWh per kWp of PV system.JRC.F.7-Renewables and Energy Efficienc