Performance assessment of institutional photovoltaic based energy system for operating as a micro-grid

Abstract A building integrated photovoltaic (PV) system with energy storage within an institution may need appropriate coordination among distributed energy sources (DERs). It is required to have an appropriate energy management strategy to improve system performance as well as to operate it as a micro-grid during the grid outage condition. In this paper, TERI’s (India) Retreat Facility’s energy system has been used, and its performance with a distributed generator has been assessed with operational strategies for fulfilling the institutional load demand in coordination with the PV, grid and battery storage; and with possibility of operating it as a micro-grid during the grid outage period too. The energy management techniques have been proposed for minimizing the energy cost of locally generated electricity with maximization of PV contribution and battery energy throughput to meet the institutional load demand. It has been observed that the effective coordination of DERs with the battery energy storage can contribute in fulfilling the institutional essential load, and to supply the total load during the grid outage conditions. The presented results are going to be useful for techno-economic analysis of sustainable energy systems for minimizing the energy cost and to operate it as a micro-grid.