Techno-economic feasibility analysis of demand response scheduling for optimum sizing and operation of a building-integrated photovoltaic energy system

A building-integrated photovoltaic energy system (BIPVS) with demand response (DR) is gaining increasing interest in improving building energy consumption to address the imbalance between energy supply and demand. The application of DR in the BIPVS literature lacks consideration of the spatial variability of solar resource distribution. The impact of DR scheduling on the optimum sizing and operation of a BIPVS requires an understanding of how DR can adapt to the uncertain energy generation patterns caused by diverse solar intensity curves. To fill this research gap, an integrated photovoltaic electricity and heating energy system are considered to meet electricity and domestic hot water demands in residential buildings. A DR strategy based on load rescheduling has been illustrated and modeled. To solve the proposed issue of optimum sizing and operation, a two-stage optimization method has been developed to minimize the cost of energy (COE). Furthermore, after the selection of four typical cities in China as potential locations for system deployment, eight scenarios based on four different solar intensity curves without and with DR are investigated and compared. The results show that the DR scheduling has been shifted towards the availability of irradiance to form a load peak at the same time as the peak solar radiation, which increases the direct consumption of photovoltaic generation and inhibits the battery dispatch. In comparison with each scenario, DR has great potential in economic performance and leads to a slight reduction in photovoltaic penetration rate. It has been observed that DR can decrease the COE with an average saving of $0.0052/kWh and a maximum reduction rate of 11.1%, while significantly reducing the battery size by 92.9% on average.