Energy storage sizing and photovoltaic self-consumption in selected households in Qatar

In this paper, we present energy storage sizing and photovoltaic self-consumption calculations of four selected households in Qatar based on actual measurements. Four houses were chosen to represent different socioeconomic groups (one large villa-high income, two mid-size villas-middle class, and one low-income family) and their electricity consumption were recorded at every five minutes with non-intrusive energy monitors for a twelve month period from July 2017 to June 2018. Moreover, to estimate solar energy production, global horizontal index (GHI) values were obtained from the solar test facility located in Qatar. Energy storage size is calculated based on average reverse energy flow. The results show that due to the cooling load, residential electricity consumptions is quite high for the large building and no storage is needed. On the other hand, in medium-size buildings storage could be used in winter months when the local consumption is low. Finally, for the low-income family due to low electricity consumption, storage units can be used for twelve months. To the best of author's knowledge, this is the first study in the GCC region to conduct such calculations with actual measurement numbers, and it will shed light on future research efforts.