Improving Solar Potential Map: Ditching Net-Metering, Embracing Demand Curve and Local Weather

The research expands the bottom-up approach to determine investment cost for self-sufficient Solar Plus systems. Existing solar maps usually utilize net-metering scheme and treat electricity grid as giant battery. However, with increased solar production, this might put an additional strain to the grid. In addition, to obtain national wide results, multiple weather patterns obtained from different meteorological stations were analyzed which also resulted in different demand curves. The scope of the research was therefore largely increased by calculating all available meteorological data in form of a typical year for Slovenia, which consist of 23 data points evenly spread all over Slovenia. However, those points vary quite a bit – some stations are positioned in the cities and towns, while others are located in small villages or places of interests (i.e., mountain resorts or airports). The points also vary in altitude (from few meters to over 2500 m) and cover different climate zones. The majority of Slovenia lies in continental zone (described with Dfb and Dfb by Köppen-Geiger climate classification) with cold winters and warm summers, with some subtropical climate at the coastal areas (Cfa and Cfb). Some mountain areas have tundra climate (ET). The presented research shows how to combine the existing data to calculate optimal Solar Plus instalment for self-sufficient buildings for each calculation point. The already validated simplified model was used for calculation of energy balance for the typical year which was later used for optimization of the results regarding costs. This includes the roof area for photovoltaic, optimal orientation of solar panels, the capacity of the battery storage and other influential parameters. The results clearly indicated the capability of each analyzed area for Solar Plus installation.