Techno-Economic Analysis of Solar-PV/Battery System for a Foundry Company

Continuous increase of electricity cost is placing an enormous pressure on the balance sheet of many businesses in South Africa. In the event of load shedding in 2007, about 170 foundry companies had faced difficult times to remain in business and production slowed down by 47%, which was also linked to the instability of Eskom supply and high electricity charges. Now recent support from the South African government for 'self-generation' without a license, encourages investments for small-scale embedded generation. However, the issue of solar energy being intermittent is still a concern. Therefore, a battery energy storage system (BESS) is a plausible enabler to be paired with a solar PV system. In this paper, a foundry company located in Johannesburg referred to as 'foundryxyz' for anonymity is used as a case study to investigate the performance-cost analysis of a solar PV paired with BESS. A System Advisor Model (SAM) was used to design and model two systems (a 547 kWdc solar PV and a 990 kWdc/LiFePO4 battery system). The electricity bill without the solar PV/LiFePO4 battery system for the foundry is R1 746 855 annually. However, the total savings with a 990 kWdc solar PV/LiFePO4 battery system is R 1 228 996 annually reflecting a cost saving of 70.35% for the company's selected load profile.