Elizabeth L. Ratnam

Residential load and rooftop PV generation: an Australian distribution network dataset

ABSTRACT Despite the rapid uptake of small-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in recent years, public availability of generation and load data at the household level remains very limited. Moreover, such data are typically measured using bi-directional meters recording only PV generation in excess of residential load rather than recording generation and load separately. In this paper, we report a publicly available dataset consisting of load and rooftop PV generation for 300 de-identified residential customers in an Australian distribution network, with load centres covering metropolitan Sydney and surrounding regional areas. The dataset spans a 3-year period, with separately reported measurements of load and PV generation at 30-min intervals. Following a detailed description of the dataset, we identify several means by which anomalous records (e.g. due to inverter failure) are identified and excised. With the resulting ‘clean’ dataset, we identify key customer-specific and aggregated characteristics of rooftop PV generation and residential load.

An optimization-based approach for assessing the benefits of residential battery storage in conjunction with solar PV

If residential customers are billed the real-time cost of electricity, battery storage may provide a cost-benefit. Consequently there is an opportunity to reduce the consumers cost of electricity by maximizing PV energy output and time-shifting load through battery storage. In this paper, we propose a framework based on quadratic programming by which the cost-benefit of energy time-shifting to a given customer may be evaluated. Accordingly, the consumer may justify expenditure on battery storage through either a least cost option of capital investment or choose to utilize existing electric vehicle (EV) battery storage, if available.

Optimization-based residential load scheduling to improve reliability in the distribution grid

Despite the recent rapid adoption of rooftop solar PV for residential customers, islanded operation during grid outages remains elusive for most PV owners. In this paper we consider approaches to improve the reliability of electricity supply in the context of a residential microgrid, consisting of a group of residential customers each with rooftop solar PV, that are connected to the distribution network via a single point of common coupling. It is assumed that there is insufficient PV generation at all times to meet the electricity demand within the residential microgrid. Three optimization-based algorithms are proposed to improve the reliability of electricity supply to each residential customer, despite variability and intermittency of the solar resource and periods of infrequent and sustained power outages in the electricity grid. By means of a case study we show that the majority of residential customers achieve greater reliability of uninterrupted electricity supply when connecting to the residential microgrid in comparison to operating in isolated self-consumption mode.