Techno-economic and environmental multi-objective design of photovoltaic systems with battery energy storage

The technological development and the increasing market competitiveness of the renewables creates favourable conditions to partially switch the electricity generation from large centralised facilities to small decentralised plants. Photovoltaic (PV) systems find effective applications if the energy production is dedicated to local self-consumption, while the grid parity concept is extended to a comparison of PV energy generation costs toward the grid electricity tariff. However, the intermittent nature of the solar source suggests the adoption of storage systems to meet the energy demand during the solar absence. The design of PV plants integrating Battery Energy Storage (BES) includes multiple aspects. Therefore, a techno-economic and environmental multi-objective design approach is proposed in this chapter to determine the PV-BES system configuration able to optimise both the economic and environmental criteria. The model, based on the hourly energy demand, the irradiation and the temperature profiles, is described and the analysis outcomes are widely discussed.