Study on the implementation of a solar photovoltaic system with self-consumption in an educational building

Abstract

In this work, the study of different remuneration schemes for the implementation of a solar energy system on a building was performed. The photovoltaic system was implemented on a public educational building, and four different schemes are compared to understand the economic feasibility of self-consuming solar energy with and without a battery system, versus selling to the electricity grid. The system performance is compared to the building’s needs, and the different consumption and grid-injection shares are analyzed. Three of the schemes are applied according to the conditions and requirements of the Portuguese Law, while the remaining one is not yet allowed, and so the legislation from another chosen country is considered. Lastly, a financial analysis was performed to evaluate and compare the feasibility of each project implementation. The results of this analysis show that both the non-legislated and legislated self-consumption schemes make for an attractive investment, and that savings resulting from the consumption of solar energy are much higher than the revenues from selling to the grid, which presents as the least attractive scheme. Finally, the battery implementation also does not show feasibility because the cost of technology is still too high, despite the reduction witnessed in recent years.