open menu

Keep you up to date!
Register now or Login

EN | ES | SE | TR

Store it or sell it on? Solar power practice and profitability explored

A Lund University masters student study sponsored by Kraftringen has given valuable insight and aided decision making, revealing it is more profitable for the CITyFiED project demonstration site in Lund to sell surplus power production from solar panels, instead of storing it in a battery.

Energy company Kraftringen has installed solar panels on some of the properties in Lund being renovated as part of CITyFiED . In order to identify the conditions to store energy produced by solar panels, Tobias Nilsson, a student at Lund University, has studied different energy storage technologies and calculated the economic viability in storing the solar electricity produced by solar panels on the properties.

The study shows that batteries are the most suitable energy storage technology for apartment buildings with solar panels and give further insights into seasonal storage. At times of the year when consumption of electricity exceeds the property's electricity consumption, longer term energy storage is not financially profitable, as investment costs in solar panels and battery exceed the possible profit. To store electricity produced during the day, with a smaller battery, and use it during dark hours, has a reasonable payback, but is not as profitable as instead selling the surplus production and buying electricity when the property's own production does not cover its need. The results are to large extent due to the Swedish conditions where there is a tax reduction for surplus production from small–scale producers of solar power, and where many energy companies offer good deals to those who sell their surplus.

“We are pleased to say Tobias will stay with us at Kraftringen an additional two months to write a detailed report of results from his master thesis which will be further used to disseminate knowledge about solar panels and energy storage to property owners who plan to invest in solar”, says Liisa Fransson, Kraftringen project manager in CITyFiED.

The full report on solar panels and energy storage will be available in English. Be sure to catch it, follow us on twitter or register with the project to receive the newsletter

 

29 September 2016