https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2024048
Original Article
Increasing the self-sufficiency of a university campus by expanding the PV capacity while minimizing the energy cost
1
University of La Reunion − PIMENT Laboratory, 15 avenue René Cassin, 97715 Saint-Denis, La Reunion, France
2
Department of Electrical and Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde, Denmark
* e-mail: mathieu.david@univ-reunion.fr
Received:
29
September
2024
Accepted:
3
December
2024
Published online: 8 January 2025
Microgrids, which promote the production and consumption of renewable energy on site, are a relevant solution to reduce carbon emissions and the price of energy for end users. However, converting an existing building stock into a microgrid powered mainly by renewable energy requires finding a technical and economic optimum while taking into account strong constraints. This work proposes a methodology to achieve this objective on an existing university campus located in La Reunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. The campus already has three photovoltaic (PV) systems and high-quality measurement data of weather, loads and energy production. The goal of the work is to find an optimal rooftop PV capacity that maximizes campus self-sufficiency while keeping energy price affordable for users. The results do not highlight a unique combination of roofs as a solution to the optimization problem. However, the analysis of possible combinations gives clear rules for defining the total photovoltaic capacity to be installed and selecting the most suitable roofs.
Key words: Microgrid / self-sufficiency / cost of energy / optimization / PV capacity expansion / PV system modelling
© T.A. Randrianantenaina et al., Published by EDP Sciences, 2025
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
