New research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory finds that single-family homes with behind-the-meter solar-plus-energy storage systems (PVESS) could likely maintain critical loads in weather events that caused outages in traditional utility systems.
The study, Evaluating the Capabilities of Behind-the-Meter Solar-plus-Storage for Providing Backup Power during Long-Duration Power Interruptions, found that in 7 of the 10 events, the majority of homes would have been able to maintain critical loads, using a PVESS with 30kWh of storage. The analysis is the first in what will be a series of studies by Berkeley Lab, in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, on the use of PVESS for backup power. This initial study is intended to provide a baseline set of performance estimates and to illustrate key performance drivers.
The findings highlighted above represent just a fraction of the full report, which provides more details on those findings, explores additional performance drivers (such as the initial state of charge on the battery and alternate PV sizing assumptions), and presents results for whole-building backup and for other residential and non-residential building types. The report also highlights opportunities for further work.
A summary of the study can be found here, and the full slide deck is available here.