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A team of researchers from the universities of Newcastle and Heriot-Watt, in the United Kingdom, has analyzed the effects of working from home and home education during the closures caused by the Covid-19 pandemic on the electricity consumption of homeowners equipped with photovoltaic systems and batteries, and found that they achieved substantial savings.
In the study “ Remote work could unlock solar PVs potential of cracking the Duck Curve ,” published in Applied Energy , scientists They say they specifically investigated how distributed solar plus storage helped mitigate the so-called duck curve.
“The aim of this study was to understand the initial changes in behavior during the onset of lockdown, observe the attenuation of these changes as restrictions were lifted, and then examine the return to more conventional practices upon exit from lockdown. exploring the possibility that some changes become lasting,” they explained.
Their analysis specifically took into account the energy performance of 100 homes using solar and storage in the south-west of the United Kingdom in the period between April and August 2020.
“Of the 100 houses, 46 had Sonnen Eco 9.43 batteries, and the rest had Sonnen Hybrid 9.53 batteries, where the size of the solar PV was 1.71-4.86 kW, and the battery size was 2.5 kW or 3.3 kW”, the academics specified. “The distribution included 56 single-family homes, 12 semi-detached houses, three mid-terrace houses and six end-of-terrace houses.”
The research team found that self-consumption of photovoltaic electricity increased by up to 7.6% and dependence on grid electricity decreased by 24 to 25% during the analyzed period.
“The notable increase in photovoltaic electricity consumption in the morning and afternoon coincided with the long periods of working from home and schooling from home,” the study adds. “Although this pattern reduced nighttime energy consumption, it resulted in an overall increase in electricity demand during the shutdown.”
The study also points out that, once the Covid-19 crisis ended, consumers returned to their previous consumption patterns, aligning themselves with pre-Covid-19 levels. The need to encourage domestic consumption practices as a way to help distributed solar resources mitigate the duck curve challenge was also highlighted.
“To improve the robustness and applicability of our findings, researchers could focus on future large-scale studies spanning diverse geographic regions and demographic profiles,” the authors conclude, referring to the future direction of their work. |
