PV generation and demand mismatch: Evaluating the potential of residential storage

Favourable conditions in recent years have led to significant uptake of residential rooftop solar photovoltaic generation in many parts of the world. However, the cost-effectiveness of such systems is reducing due to declining subsidies, falling feed-in tariffs, and the typical timing mismatch between solar generation and local demand. In this paper, we investigate how this mismatch can be addressed by installing a customer-end storage system that provides an opportunity to maximally exploit the value of existing solar generation. The value of such storage depends on the extent of the coincidence of demand and generation, the size of the storage system, the pricing structure for both energy used and energy generated, any available feed-in tariffs, and the cost of the storage itself. An optimal storage operational strategy using dynamic programming is introduced and a variety of storage system sizes and price scenarios are evaluated and compared. Our study shows that under certain conditions customer-end storage could become economically attractive to consumers in the near future, opening the door for disruptive retail electricity business models in the years to come.