Techno-economic optimization of a PV + battery system: A case study for a hospital in Orlando, FL

摘要

A significant amount of recent research effort has been put on the modeling of renewable energy systems (RES) consisting of various sources that incorporate storage capabilities. The reasons behind this trend are mainly the decreasing unit price of battery systems and the increasing need for adding resilience in the modern power systems. In this context, an optimization problem is formulated to investigate PV+battery systems from both economical and reliability aspects. Using real demand and solar irradiation data, a case study for a hospital in Orlando, FL has been conducted and analyzed. The objective is to minimize the total system cost given specific reliability constraints and the decision variable is the size of the battery which is going to be attached to a given PV array. The metrics of Total System Cost (TSC) and Chance Constraint Probability (CCP) have been adopted to assess the performance of the system. The results are presented in numerical terms for the considered scenario and a comparison between the proposed and two other methods has been conducted to highlight the importance of optimally solving the problem under discussion. The proposed framework along with the illustrative results provides useful insights on the importance of adding an optimally sized battery system to enhance RES resilience for supporting critical facilities.