Evaluation of Various Layouts of PV - Based Houses

The proliferation of the Photovoltaic (PV) applications has made the PV - based houses a viable solution to the energy savings and environmental issues, particularly for sunny countries like Egypt. In order to maximize the efficiency and decrease the cost of PV - based houses, various layouts for the electrical network have been reported in literature. A typical layout of an electrical network of a PV house include the PV system, power converters (AC/DC, DC/DC, DC/AC) and loads that might be AC- or DC-based appliances. PV-based houses are classified into three main categories: 1) standalone(off-grid); 2) directly connected to the grid and 3) grid connected with batteries (backup). This paper aims at comparing between the layouts from the perspectives of cost and efficiency. The comparison is based on a case study for house data that is typical for a moderate-income family in Egypt. Some of the reported layouts are modified to suit the local requirements, update with the technology advances, especially in the field lighting and reduce the cost without degrading the overall performance. Two more layouts are proposed in this work to accommodate all possible scenarios of availability and accessibility of the public national grid. It is found that a proper combination between AC and DC wiring in a PV-based house achieves the compromise between the efficiency and the cost.