PV Self-Consumption and Self-Sufficiency for Household and Office Users: The Lockdown Effects During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The lockdown period due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent adoption of homeworking had effects also on the energy sector, by shifting electrical consumption from tertiary to residential sector. This article analyzes the electric load curves in the office and at home for a group of employees, estimating the change of the Self-Consumption (SC) and the Self-Sufficiency (SS) when PV plants are installed, during the two months of the lockdown period (2020) with respect to the previous year. This investigation can help to explore the impact of homeworking, which is now usually adopted by many employees. For this purpose, the impact of different PV sizes on SC and SS rates, and the improvements due to the adoption of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), are analyzed. Sizing the PV production equal to the annual consumption and the BESS capacity equal to the difference between the average PV production and the average consumption, the annual SC (=SS in this case) increases from 35% to 68% in households and from 50% to 71% in the office building. The lockdown restrictions increase and decrease these rates of about 5-7 points in households and office building respectively. © 2022 WITPress.