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.

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