Building Energy Demand Uncertainty and Economic Assessment of Residential Energy Storage System

Abstract

Building energy management (BEM) with emphasis on Energy storage Systems for the household energy management is a conducive approach to navigate the challenges of energy demand uncertainty with limited grid energy supply. However, managing the efficiency and affordability of ESS for the residential consumers is quite dynamic and complex particularly for the third world countries which are struggling with accelerated population, declining economy and climate change vulnerabilities. Therefore, considering Pakistan as a case study, this study aims to predict demand uncertainty using BEM for the green buildings which are dependent upon efficient ESS and compares the levelized cost of storage (LCOS) between lithium-ion batteries (LiB) and lead acid batteries (LaB). BEM assists in analyzing the impact of weather on the energy load profile across various climatic zones in the major cities of Pakistan and aids in determining the size of photovoltaic (PV) systems and ESS). In addition, three green residential buildings are distributed as small, medium, and large houses, each with three occupancy profiles: low, medium, and high energy consumption across three distinct locales. The findings indicate that both ESS are the significant options to manage energy requirements of green buildings, irrespective of building size or occupancy profile. Moreover, the findings suggest that lithium-ion batteries are relatively better in terms of demand variability, as it exhibits greater resilience to fluctuations and continue to be appealing in such contexts. The uncertainty analysis reveals that the LCOS value is between 0.002¢/kWh and 169¢/kWh for all the selected ESS. More specifically, between 0.002¢/kWh and 61.9¢/kWh for LiB, and between 2.1¢/kWh and 169¢/kWh for LaB.