PVAnalytX: A MATLAB toolkit for techno-economic analysis and performance evaluation of rooftop PV systems

Abstract

Abstract The adaptation of rooftop solar PV systems has increased significantly in recent years. Batteries have become an essential part of the rooftop solar PV systems, which ensures maximum utilisation of solar energy. With a view to present a clear insight to benefits of a rooftop solar PV system, considering both the technical and economic benefits, a MATLAB based PVAnalytX software toolkit has been presented in this paper. The end users can evaluate both the technical and economic benefits of a rooftop solar PV system considering solar generation and electricity demand variability, as well the battery performance degradation over the course of its usage. In addition, the mechanism to generate forecasted solar power generation and electricity demand data is also included as a feature in the proposed software toolkit. Furthermore, the toolkit considers actual electricity imports and export tariffs that allow the end consumers to know their financial expenditures for electricity consumption and income generated through the export of access rooftop PV energy to the grid. A thorough validation of the proposed toolkit has been presented through two case studies using actual dataset of rooftop PV systems located at CBD region of Sydney, Australia.