Effect of Solar PV Penetration on Residential Energy Consumption Pattern

The residential rooftop solar penetration in the U.S. has increased rapidly over the past few years. This increase, if not properly accounted for, can lead to operational and reliability challenges for the electric power industry in the form of under-utilization of available energy, increase in costs, and reduction in environmental benefits, as demonstrated by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) Duck Curve. The authors of this paper had previously developed a bottom-up approach for computing season-wise household-level residential energy consumption profiles using a synthetic population resource. In this paper, that model is enhanced to account for the effects that increasing percentages of rooftop solar penetration can have on the residential energy demand profiles of different regions. This information will be very useful to electric power utilities because it will help them efficiently manage the increasing numbers of residential rooftop solar installations in their supply areas.