Scheduling energy consumption for residential stand-alone photovoltaic systems

Abstract

Among various renewable energy sources, solar energy is considered an effective solution to the shortage of energy in the future. A stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) system can be particularly impactful in an isolated area where access to the grid is limited or unavailable. Because solar energy generation primarily depends on the availability of solar irradiance over time, energy management is crucial, which in turn can also satisfy user comfort and system efficiency. In this paper, we propose an energy consumption scheduling model for a residential house with a stand-alone PV system and battery. We develop a mixed-integer optimization model that uses consumption patterns and appliance priority to schedule the use of appliances. We test our model under four scenarios based on region and season. The results demonstrate that the proposed model provides optimal schedules for operating the appliances. In addition, we conduct a sensitivity analysis on the PV array size and the battery capacity. We compare the optimized case with the non-optimized case.