Simulation and analysis of a solar assisted heat pump system with two different storage types for high levels of PV electricity self-consumption

The incentives for PV-systems in Europe is being gradually lowered or ended. This makes a higher level of self-consumption interesting for owners of PV-systems. Sweden has an incentive of 35% of the investment cost for PV-systems. Unfortunately not all consumers can get this incentive. Therefore a high level of self-consumption will be necessary if the PV-systems are to be profitable in Sweden. A reference system with two different energy storage technologies is investigated in this paper. One system with 48 kW h of batteries and one system with a hot water storage tank where the electricity is stored as heat. The research questions in this paper are: Which storage system gives the highest level of PV electricity self-consumption? Are the storage systems profitable with the assumptions made in this paper? What are the levelized costs of electricity (LCOE) for the reference system with different storage system? The system with batteries has a self-consumption of 89% of the annual PV-electricity output and the system with a hot water storage tank has 88%. The system with batteries has a levelized cost of electricity two times higher than the system with a hot water storage tank. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.