Chiara Tambani

Parametric study on the financial performance of battery-supported photovoltaic systems connected to smart grids in current and future market scenarios

This article presents the economic performance of battery-supported residential photovoltaic systems connected to smart grids in the presence of a market-driven electricity tariff. In particular, the article deals with the economic benefit resulting on varied photovoltaic system and battery sizes, through a parametric analysis. Such an analysis is strongly dependent on the costs of photovoltaic systems and battery packs, which are prone to decrease in the coming years, according to many authors. In this context, the article investigates current and forecast economic scenarios, in order to show the expectable improvement in the financial performance in systems installed in the next few years. For this purpose, the article includes a review of photovoltaic system and battery prices forecasts for the coming years. The financial analysis takes into account two different (and conservative) feed-in tariffs: in the first case, the hourly national price of electricity is used as a feed in tariff, in the second case no reimbursement is considered for exported electricity, thus considering the case of wide photovoltaic system penetration and a consequent photovoltaic electricity overproduction.