Track: Energy

Abstract

As solar energy has been growing over the years, the energy markets have been gradually moving toward using a decentralized market. Renewable energy is slowly becoming unpopular because of the hidden fees being charged to people who have installed PV systems. The energy that is being generated does not match what is consumed. The significance to this study starts with people becoming more involved with solar energy if there are incentives worth having PV systems installed. Also, looking for ways to store the surplus of energy not being consumed. There are three types of methods used to help get a better understanding of net-metering and peer-to-peer (P2P) solar systems. Using technical and economic indexes the comparison was done looking at the following indexes- peak power, energy balance, economic benefit, and transaction index. Based on a microgrid of 28 commercial buildings, readings of consumption were taken in intervals of one hour and a python model was made to find PV size and compare trading mechanisms. It was found that the combination of P2P and net-metering had the best overall performance, followed by net-metering itself, with the best season being fall for two and summer for net-metering by itself.  However, P2P was found to be more economically suited than net itself. This shows that a P2P model implemented in a microgrid helps create more energy balance, although the combination would achieve the highest performance.