Optimal Design of Efficient Rooftop Photovoltaic Arrays

The authors address the automated design of cost-effective, efficient rooftop photovoltaic (PV) installations. The algorithm they present can design systems with a variety of solar hardware and has been used to create more than 70,000 designs for PV installations. This paper addresses a major challe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:INFORMS journal on applied analytics 2019-07, Vol.49 (4), p.281-294
Main Authors: Udell, Madeleine, Toole, Oliver
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Alternative energy
Automation
Cost analysis
Design
Direct current
Energy
Energy conservation
Energy efficiency
Experts
Installation
Installation costs
Installations
Integer programming
Linear programming
Lower bounds
Methods
mixed-integer linear programming
Operations research
Optimization
photovoltaic array
Photovoltaic cells
Renewable energy
Residential energy
Roofs
Shading
Solar cells
Solar energy
solar system design
Wiring
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Summary:The authors address the automated design of cost-effective, efficient rooftop photovoltaic (PV) installations. The algorithm they present can design systems with a variety of solar hardware and has been used to create more than 70,000 designs for PV installations. This paper addresses a major challenge in the residential solar industry: automated design of cost-effective, efficient rooftop photovoltaic (PV) installations. Optimal designs choose system components, locations, and wiring to minimize cost while meeting desired energy output and complying with all physical and legal constraints. We present a novel lower bound for the energy produced by a PV installation, which admits efficient optimization via integer linear programming. The resulting algorithm can design systems with a variety of solar hardware, including microinverters, string inverters, and direct current (DC) optimizers, and optimize for complex shading patterns. Prior to our work, solar installers designed PV installations by hand. Our algorithm automates PV design using operations research (OR) techniques and has been used to create more than 70,000 designs for PV installations. We compare the performance of our optimal designs to designs produced by solar-installation experts at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Our algorithm designs faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient installations than expert installers, producing designs in tens of seconds, where experts require tens of minutes. The optimized designs deliver the required energy output at lower cost in more than 70% of cases and on average increase the energy produced per dollar invested. These results indicate that rooftop solar PV installations could produce 2% more energy at the same installation cost, or 820 gigawatt hours more energy per year. The online supplement is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.2019.1004 .
ISSN:0092-2102
2644-0865
1526-551X
2644-0873
DOI:10.1287/inte.2019.1004