Integrated Energy Management System Approach for Off-Grid Residential Home

Efficient management of renewable energy sources is crucial for grid integration. This paper proposes an integrated energy management system (IEMS) that combines supply and demand-side management to manage the use of solar energy. An off-grid residential load supplied by a 7.5 kVA diesel generator (DG) and 10 kW photovoltaic (PV) supply is considered. The main objective of the IEMS framework is to increase PV usage through solar energy forecasting (SEF), time-of-use (TOU) criteria, direct load control (DLC) and generator control (GC). First, the PV is optimally sized using the Performance Ratio method. Next, a three-step SEF approach predicts the next-day ahead PV generation. Finally, the IEMS’s decision algorithm sets the TOU, initiates DLC to reduce excess load, and/or increase supply by calling up the DG. The performance of three configurations is compared: DG, DG/PV, and DG/PV/IEMS. The DG/PV/IEMS configuration showed an increase PV usage over the DG/PV by 132%. In addition, the IEMS reduces CO2 emissions by 47% and 35% when compared to the DG and DG/PV configurations respectively.