Full Description

There is increasing interest in residential backup energy systems, however current microgrid and solar analysis design tools for single family home microgrids and backup energy systems are lacking. This paper describes a modeling process that synthesizes building energy simulation outputs from Climate Studio (Solemma 2021) and solar array power generation outputs from Helioscope (Helioscope 2019) in a spreadsheet battery capacity sizing tool that calculates home energy autonomy over a design period for a range of battery sizes. This modeling process is used to evaluate battery system sizing options for an existing single family home in Austin, Texas for which historical energy use and solar generation data are available to benchmark the building and solar modeling methods. Resultantly, a battery size is recommended in combination with summary tables and graphs that consolidate and visualize the outcomes of the proposed solar array and battery backup systems.