Multi-site assessments for solar and battery installations

To do this, we developed new bessIQ optimisation models and analytical tools to address the twin challenges of determining the optimal size of a PV/battery system (which arise due to the complex relationship between the tariffs, PV, battery, and customer load), and the complexity for building owners managing multiple buildings and seeking to prioritise capital investments.

These assessments helped the client to rank the most financially viable installations to make significant savings on their electricity costs across a large property portfolio and proceed to tender for installations across multiple sites.

For a low fixed fee per site, ITP undertakes:

• desktop assessment of buildings on site for PV and battery viability based on a number of engineering factors
• optimisation modelling to simulate smart controllers for PV and battery, based on load and tariff timing, if applicable to the proposed site, and
• detailed financial analysis to reveals the optimal combination of PV, battery and tariff for a given site load.

For each site, we identify the optimum capacity of solar PV (kWp) and battery (kW and kWh) and generate performance metrics to support business decision-making such as investment return (net present value or internal rate of return), annual electricity bill cost reduction, capital cost, simple payback (years), emissions reduction etc.

These assessments show a strong financial case for solar PV investments with some sites, depending on load profile, showing batteries as potentially one of the higher financially ranked options. There are significant financial gains from annual bill reductions of the most financially viable installations.

The multi-site assessments are ideal for:

• Building owners & managers exploring the feasibility of PV and battery systems of any size for multiple sites
• Entities managing a large portfolio of buildings, e.g. all schools in a state, all council buildings in a Local Government Area, multiple retail, hospitality, or office sites