Improving the feasibility of household and community energy storage: A techno-enviro-economic study for the UK

Abstract

Rooftop photovoltaics (PV) have become widely adopted by domestic customers in tandem with energy storage systems to generate clean energy and limit import from the grid, however most applications struggle to achieve profitability. The level at which energy storage is deployed, be it household energy storage (HES), or as a community energy storage (CES) system, can potentially increase the economic feasibility. Furthermore, the introduction of a Time-of-Use (TOU) tariff enables households to further reduce their energy costs through demand side management (DSM). Here we investigate and compare the performance of HES and CES with DSM. The results suggest that TOU tariffs can effectively shave peak demand by up to 30% and lower energy bills by at least 20%, but do not improve self-consumption or self-sufficiency rate. This study indicates that all cases considered are environmentally friendly and can pay back the total CO2 emissions associated with the manufacturing within 8 years. However, the levelised cost of storage (LCOS) is still beyond a household's affordability, ranging from £0.4 to £2.03 kWh−1, though CES is proven more effective at improving self-consumption for consumers and shaving peak demand for network operators. The feasibility can be improved by 1) combining different services and tariffs to obtain more revenues for households; 2) more legislative and financial support to reduce system costs; and 3) more innovative business models and policies to optimise revenues with existing resource.