Browsing by Author "Coetzee, Stef"

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    Predictive residential energy management with photovoltaic power generation and battery energy storage
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-04) Coetzee, Stef; Mouton, H. du T.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Over the course of the past decade, South African national energy utility Eskom has increased its average electricity rate more than fourfold as it finds itself in financial difficulty, brought about by a myriad causes. During the same time period, the cost of solar photovoltaic arrays and battery energy storage has fallen by more than two thirds. In this thesis, a residential energy management system which incorporates small-scale solar photovoltaic power generation and battery energy storage is developed. The primary goal of the system is to increase self-sufficiency of a given household through management of the battery energy storage unit and two controllable loads: an air-handling unit and an electric water heater. Such a system would be able to shield residences, at least in part, from the energy utility’s ongoing challenges. A grid-connected household, featuring each of the controllable electrical entities mentioned, as well as a photovoltaic array, and a generic non-controllable load is described. Due to the intermittent nature of solar radiation, potential solar power generation is inevitably lost because of power supply-demand misalignment. Model predictive control, a popular process-control technique, is exerted over the residential system in pursuit of resolving this misalignment. At a sampling time of ten minutes, a predictive controller capable of an hour (or six steps) of model-based foresight is formulated and tested in simulation. A rules-based hierarchical controller is used as baseline against which the predictive control scheme is evaluated. The controller’s ability to reduce solar power curtailment is confirmed by evaluating its performance with relevant data from each of the four seasons (from September 2017 to August 2018), for prediction horizons one through six.