Shared Solar and Battery Storage Configuration Effectiveness for Reducing the Grid Reliance of Apartment Complexes

Moiz Masood Syed,James Darbyshire,Gregory M Morrison

doi:10.3390/en13184820

Abstract

More than 2 million houses in Australia have installed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems; however, apartment buildings have adopted a low percentage of solar PV and battery storage installations. Given that grid usage reduction through PV and battery storage is a primary objective in most residential buildings, apartments have not yet fully benefited from installations of such systems. This research presents shared microgrid configurations for three apartment buildings with PV and battery storage and evaluates the reduction in grid electricity usage by analyzing self-sufficiency. The results reveal that the three studied sites at White Gum Valley achieved an overall self-sufficiency of more than 60%. Owing to the infancy of the shared solar and battery storage market for apartment complexes and lack of available data, this study fills the research gap by presenting preliminary quantitative findings from implementation in apartment buildings.

Highlights

A combination of increasing costs of electricity bills along with the declining price of solar panels, concerns over global climate change, and favorable renewable uptake policies have led to a rapid increase in the solar installation capacity across Australia
PV systems have been widely adopted at the residential scale, the lack of a regulatory framework for shared ownership and distribution of cost-benefits have prevented the operationalization of rooftop PV and battery storage systems in medium and high density apartment dwellings
This paper evaluates self-sufficiency obtained from shared microgrid configurations installed at three different apartment buildings in a newly developed precinct at White Gum Valley (WGV) Perth, Australia

Summary

Introduction

A combination of increasing costs of electricity bills along with the declining price of solar panels, concerns over global climate change, and favorable renewable uptake policies have led to a rapid increase in the solar installation capacity across Australia. PV systems have been widely adopted at the residential scale, the lack of a regulatory framework for shared ownership and distribution of cost-benefits have prevented the operationalization of rooftop PV and battery storage systems in medium and high density apartment dwellings. A few multi-residential projects have implemented a shared governance structure [3], and there is no clear model for ready adoption. A shared governance structure would seem important to increase the uptake of distributed renewable energy systems (DRES) as the price of PV-battery technology is declining and solar irradiance conditions in Australia are favorable [4]

Methods

Results

Conclusion