An Assessment of Different Load Demands on Photovoltaic plus Battery Storage System Profitability: A Case Study of Australia

Electric utility companies have developed dynamic pricing plans to encourage energy consumers to reduce residential demand, especially during peak times, namely to leverage residential demand-side flexibility. Another means of leveraging residential demand includes using renewable energy resources, which are characterized by large initial capital investments endorsed by energy users. Such investments represent a main obstacle to leveraging demand-side flexibility in the presence of local generation. In this paper, a comprehensive assessment is performed to evaluate the profitability of residential photovoltaic (PV) plus battery energy storage systems using HOMER Grid software as an economic optimization tool. This comparative analysis is conducted based on energy consumption costs and current regulatory policies, resulting in a broad analysis of the profitability of PV plus storage system investment through its lifetime. This study focuses on a real dataset of residential local consumption for 54 consumers on the AusGrid electricity network, New South Wales (NSW), Australia.