Optimized Charging of PV-Batteries for Households Using Real-Time Pricing Scheme: A Model and Heuristics-Based Implementation

The combination of solar panels (PV) with energy storage systems (ESS) has been becoming more and more a common practice for households. In this context, the battery of ESS satisfies the needs of the household when PV generation is not present. Recently, dynamic pricing became one of the measures taken to shift the demand. Thanks to technological advances (e.g., smart meters), real-time pricing (RTP) has shown to be the most attractive option in the market, due to the ease of estimating price elasticity over various time periods. We studied a PV-battery system for the case of households which are under RTP scheme. To this end, we described and modeled the underlying system, and compiled an objective function having as an optimization goal, the minimization of the charging cost of the battery. Furthermore, we propose a heuristics-based algorithm that schedules the charging process during cheap periods. To evaluate the amount of savings, we considered a real-life testbed and implemented the proposed algorithm by taking into account different scenarios. The results demonstrate the benefits of households adhering to real-time pricing scheme, where the savings reached 50% in certain cases.