Homes with solar panels do not require on-site storage to reap the biggest economic and environmental benefits of solar ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス, according to research from the ラーメンベット 禁止ゲーム of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. In fact, storing solar ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス for nighttime use actually increases both ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス consumption and emissions compared with sending excess solar ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス directly to the utility grid.
In a paper published in Nature ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス on Jan. 30, researchers assessed the trade-offs of adding home ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス storage to households with existing solar panels, shedding light on the benefits and drawbacks of adding storage considering today’s full ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス grid mix.
According to the Solar ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス Industry Association, the number of rooftop solar installations grew to more than 1 million U.S. households in 2016. There is a growing interest in using ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス storage to capture solar ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス to reduce reliance on traditional utilities. But for now, few homes have on-site storage to hold their solar ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス for later use in the home.
“The good ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス is that storage isn’t required to make solar panels useful or cost-effective,” said co-author Michael Webber, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and deputy director of UT Austin’s Energy Institute. “This also counters the prevailing myth that storage is needed to integrate distributed solar power just because it doesn’t produce energy at night.”
Webber and co-author Robert Fares, a ラーメンベット 禁止ゲーム alumnus who is now an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow at the U.S. Department of ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス, analyzed the impact of home ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス storage using electricity data from almost 100 Texas households that are part of a smart grid test bed managed by Pecan Street Inc., a renewable ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス and smart technology company housed at UT Austin.
They found that storing solar ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス for nighttime use increases a household's annual ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス consumption — in comparison with using solar panels without storage — because storage consumes some ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス every time it charges and discharges. The researchers estimated that adding ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス storage to a household with solar panels increases its annual ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス consumption by about 324 to 591 kilowatt-hours.
“I expected that storage would lead to an increase in ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス consumption,” Fares said. “But I was surprised that the increase could be so significant — about an 8 to 14 percent increase on average over the year.”
The researchers also found that adding storage indirectly increases overall emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide based on today’s Texas grid mix, which is primarily made up of fossil fuels. The increase in emissions is primarily due to the increase in ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス consumption required to account for storage inefficiencies. Because storage affects what time of day a household draws electricity from the grid, it also influences emissions in that way.
If a homeowner is seeking to reduce his or her environmental footprint, adding storage would not make the household more green, but it shouldn’t be dismissed either, the researchers said.
“Solar combined with storage is still a lot cleaner than having no solar at all,” Fares said.
For utility companies, the benefits are more clear cut. Solar ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス storage reduces peak grid demand by 8 to 32 percent and the magnitude of solar power injections to the grid by 5 to 42 percent. This is good for the utility because it can reduce the amount of electricity generation and delivery capacity required.
“However, if the utility is interested in reducing emissions, incentivizing home storage is probably not a good idea,” Fares said.
In short, the analysis showed that storing solar ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス today offers fewer environmental benefits than just sending it straight to the grid, because the ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス lost to storage inefficiencies is ultimately made up with fossil-fuel electricity from the grid. “These findings challenge the myth that storage is inherently clean, but that, in turn, offers useful insights for utility companies,” Webber said.
“If we use the storage as the means to foster the adoption of significantly more renewables that offset the dirtiest sources, then storage — done the right way and installed at large-scale — can have beneficial impacts on the grid’s emissions overall,” Webber said.
This work was funded by Pecan Street Inc., the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and The University of Texas at Austin ラーメンベット 入金ボーナス Institute.
