Benefit Evaluation of PV Orientation for Individual Residential Consumers

Hakim Azaioud, Jan Desmet and Lieven Vandevelde
Additional contact information
Hakim Azaioud: EELab/Lemcko, Department of Electromechanical, Systems and Metal Engineering, Ghent University, 8500 Kortrijk, Belgium
Jan Desmet: EELab/Lemcko, Department of Electromechanical, Systems and Metal Engineering, Ghent University, 8500 Kortrijk, Belgium
Lieven Vandevelde: EELab, Department of Electromechanical, Systems and Metal Engineering, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 19, 1-24

Abstract: Photovoltaic (PV) installations located in the northern hemisphere must be oriented to the south in order to obtain maximal annual yield. This is mainly driven by the remuneration mechanisms which incentivize maximal energy production to a certain extent. Nowadays, such support mechanisms are declining or even phased out in many countries. Hence, self-consuming the produced energy is getting more viable. In order to match better the load demand pattern, the azimuth angle of a PV installation could be changed or oriented towards multiple directions. This article investigates the benefits of PV installations facing other directions than the south. Therefore, the Hay & Davies transposition model has been used to calculate the in-plane irradiance, as it is found in the literature to be the most accurate for non-south faced PV installations. In order to determine the benefit, a large dataset of real measured consumption profiles has been used and then divided according to their annual consumption. Large consumers with an oversized east/west-oriented PV installation especially take advantage. The self-sufficiency index (SSI) is found to increase with almost 0.94 percent points, while the self-consumption index (SCI) increases with 6.46 percent points. The peak reduction is assessed by calculating the annual moving average of the month peaks. It is found that this moving average month peak reduction is marginal. Lastly, the reduction in storage capacity is found to be not that significant, although in terms of battery utilization it is found that the number of discharge cycles is reduced with 6%.

Keywords: in-plane irradiance; azimuth angle; self-sufficiency; peak reduction; rooftop solar; storage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/19/5122/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/19/5122/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:19:p:5122-:d:422791

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().