Insight Report: Domestic solar PV customers with automatic in-premises balancing
Overview
With the increasing deployment of distributed energy generation from sources such as solar PV, significant net electricity export could challenge distribution networks in ways for which they were never designed. It is important to understand the potential impacts on the energy network and possible mechanisms to mitigate this. In the Customer-Led Network Revolution project, households with PV installations and with different methods of maximising self-consumption were monitored to understand the potential to reduce PV export to the grid.
This report considers test cell TC20 (Auto), comprising 93 customers with solar PV and an automatic balancing system designed to divert excess PV generation into a hot water store. This was intended to increase the proportion of PV generation used on site and reduce PV export at times of peak PV energy generation. TC20 (Auto) is compared against baseline group TC1a and TC20 (IHD), the latter comprising PV customers with an in-home display which notified users when PV generation exceeded household demand so that they could manually increase electricity consumption. This allows a comparison of the effectiveness of an automatic system for increasing load, against that of a manual one – See more at: http://www.www.networkrevolution.co.uk/project-library/insight-report-domestic-solar-pv-customers-automatic-premisis-balancing/#sthash.Lvh7VyX7.dpuf
