Influence of load coordination with solar energy potential on the optimal sizing of standalone PV systems

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the influence of load coordination with solar energy availability on the size and cost of standalone PV renewable energy systems. To maximize the solar energy harvesting and minimize both storage requirements and cost, the proposed load coordination technique suggest shifting the load requirements fully or partially to the time of high solar radiation availability. The optimal size of the considered system is investigated with various types of load requirements that have different load coordination percentages, namely: street-lighting (fully non-coordinated), residential (partially coordinated), industrial (partially coordinated), and irrigation (fully coordinated). A MATLAB computer code is developed for system optimization while incorporating hourly weather conditions of Dammam City, Eastern Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The findings show that fully coordinated load (irrigation) resulted in a 24% reduction in the levelized cost of energy, while the storage system size was reduced by 39 %, comparing to the reference case with same load that was not coordinated. However, in the partially coordinated loads for residential (partially coordinated with 50%) and industrial (partially coordinated with 65%), cost reductions of 11 and 16 % are achieved and the storage system sizes are reduced by 17 and 26 %, respectively.

Keywords

• Load management
• Off-grid
• Renewable
• Optimal sizing
• Residential
• Industrial