Towards the Electrical Self-Sufficiency of a University Campus: Techno-Economic Case Studies

A university Campus is a potentially optimal playground to approach the self-sufficiency of the electrical consumption by using photovoltaic (PV) generation and appropriate storage with a profitable economic investment. This work presents the case study of Politecnico di Torino, in which PV generation with nominal power of 1 MW is already operating with ≈100% self-consumption and ≈10% self-sufficiency. However, the simulation results demonstrate that the self-sufficiency can be significantly improved (up to 70%) by installing multi-megawatt PV generation and two tens of megawatt-hour of battery capacity. The techno-economic aspects considered are the cost effectiveness of the investment and the reduction of power injections into the grid.