Business cases for microgrids

Abstract

It was done a study for three different business cases, in each one will change the components of the microgrid, so the study will have to be different for each one. However, each study will take into account the technical and the economics aspects. For each case it was propose a configuration for the microgrid and after the study of this configuration some alternatives were proposed, these alternatives were studied as well and compared with the initial configuration. This projects focused on which configuration worked best and is the most economical one for being self-sufficient. Furthermore, it was done a program in Python that was used to know the behavior of the battery depending on the demand, so we it able us to know the current level of the battery for each hour, how many kWh are provided by the batteries and how many kWh of the demand are not satisfy by the microgrid. 1) The first case considered a photovoltaic installation for cover all the consumption of the house that is being studying. It will be studied how many PV panels and batteries are needed to be an installation self-sufficient. 2) For the second case was formed for PV panels and batteries as well, but in this case it was considered the possibility to be connected to the grid. It has to be kept in mind that in Spain are several taxes that should be paid for installing a residential installation at the same time that it is required a grid backup. The initial configuration was compared with an installation without batteries and also was economically compared with how much it would cost if the whole consumption would be satisfied by the grid. 3) The third case considered a biomass boiler as a backup for the photovoltaic installation, to supply the whole thermal consumption, which in fact represent the most part of the consumption. Moreover In this section was included the economical comparison if all the demand would be satisfied by the grid, as the case before, as well as the economical comparison with a heating oil boiler and it was also compared with an installation with heat pumps. Finally it is concluded that on one hand it is not worthwhile to install a photovoltaic system to cover all the demand if this include also the thermal necessities, on the other hand if there is installed a biomass boiler as backup for thermal necessities it is a worthwhile installation.