Increasing PV Self-Consumption Using Electric Water Heater Thermal Capacity

Abstract

In recent years, the implementation of household solar systems increased exponentially. It can cause an imbalance between generation and consumption of energy. Increasing PV self-consumption through Demand Response (DR) is one of the methods to reduce this effect. On the other hand, Dynamic day-ahead pricing will be the future of electricity pricing as the electricity market will be more competitive. This paper proposes a novel method to increase solar self-consumption by using the thermal capacity of the Electric Water Heater (EWH) under a dynamic day-ahead pricing. The proposed method can minimize the electric cost of the user by optimally using the cheap hours of the dynamic price while efficiently uses solar energy in the middle of the day. Also, through a novel method for modeling user comfort, user satisfaction is guaranteed.