Implementing renewable energy technologies in buildings: impacts of local-specific conditions, intermittency and volatile power markets

Abstract

Increased implementations of small-scale renewable energy technologies in buildings can potentially save costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the total costs and climatic impact of implementations in major cities in Norway. Basing the analysis in data of hourly resolutions captures effects of how intermittency and volatility in the power market impacts production and cost for implementors in the major cities. A model with back-up electricity was developed with focus on the total costs and climatic impact of covering a building’s electrical and heating needs, as opposed to analysing the technologies in isolation. Using hourly electricity prices from 2022 and 2018, and a fixed price scenario the performance of the implementations was analysed.

Results show that electricity prices are the main factor when judging economical performance and points particularly to photovoltaic systems (PV) as especially sensitive to electricity prices. Alternative configurations of PV systems on a typical house outperform south facing ones. Considerable reliance on back-up electricity results in worse economical results for air source heat pumps (ASHPs) and bioenergy combined heat and power (CHP) modules. Even with substantial temperature differences between locations, electricity prices are still the deciding factor. All technologies show purposefulness as implementations in the power market. Results show that ASHPs significantly reduces climatic impact, while PV systems climatically perform poorly in comparison to the Norwegian electricity mix. For the climatic impact of bioenergy CHPs it is concluded that the scope of this thesis does not provide for a confident basis to conclude on CHPs climatic impact.