Building-Integrated Microgrid with Zero Energy Export - Practical Approach to Sizing

A building-integrated microgrid (BIM) has been a widely utilized concept in low-carbon smart cities. The key advantages of microgrids are using locally available renewable energy sources (RES) and reducing dependency on fossil fuels. Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and battery storage systems play a crucial role in BIM to achieve desired goals. Due to legal/regulatory and technical restrictions, the distribution system operator (DSO) often imposes zero energy export (ZEE) for these microgrids. Therefore, the sizing of solar-battery systems in BIM, which will be technically feasible and economically optimized, is a challenge for designers, owners and DSO. The objective of this paper is to show the practical approach for design and sizing a microgrid for public buildings using the real data sets of a power consumption and solar energy production. As an example, the BIM for the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Sarajevo is presented.