IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ibn/jmsjnl/v7y2017i4p16-26.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial Viability of Residential Photovoltaic and Battery Systems in Californias

Author

Listed:
  • Jonas Lehr
  • Evangelos Vrettos
  • Ram Rajagopal
  • Rishee Jain
  • Martin Everts

Abstract

Using a battery on a household level has become easier after the launch of Tesla¡¯s Powerwall. Storing electricity during daytime¡¯s PV overproduction or charging the battery during night with an attractive tariff is the most prominent applications. This paper explores the economic impact of the usage of residential battery storage combined with solar photovoltaics (PV) based on real load data from Northern California, USA. A data-driven, deterministic model to benchmark electricity cost savings for single households is presented and the financial viability of such systems is scrutinized for California. Our results indicate that under current capacity and price points, battery systems have limited financial viability and have a payback period exceeding 20 years in most cases. We deepen our analysis and compare the results of our deterministic model to that of a stochastic model to demonstrate that for an hourly time resolution the deterministic model provides an adequate benchmark for estimating cost (within 3%) savings with a short (1/60th) computation time.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonas Lehr & Evangelos Vrettos & Ram Rajagopal & Rishee Jain & Martin Everts, 2017. "Financial Viability of Residential Photovoltaic and Battery Systems in Californias," Journal of Management and Sustainability, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 7(4), pages 16-26, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:ibn:jmsjnl:v:7:y:2017:i:4:p:16-26
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jms/article/view/71394/38979
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jms/article/view/71394
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    solar PV; battery; profitability estimation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ibn:jmsjnl:v:7:y:2017:i:4:p:16-26. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Canadian Center of Science and Education (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.