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Assessing the influence of the temporal resolution of electrical load and PV

generation profiles on self-consumption and sizing of PV-battery systems

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DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2016.04.050

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Assessing the influence of the temporal resolution of electrical load and PV generation
profiles on self-consumption and sizing of PV-battery systems

T. Becka,∗, H. Kondziellab , G. Huarda , T. Brucknerb,c

a Corporate Sector Research and Advance Engineering, Robert Bosch GmbH, Robert-Bosch-Campus 1, 71272 Renningen, Germany
b Fraunhofer Center for International Management and Knowledge Economy, Sustainability Management and Infrastructure Economics,
Neumarkt 9-19, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
c Institute for Infrastructure and Resources Management, University of Leipzig, Grimmaische Straße 12, D-04109 Leipzig, Germany

Abstract
The interest in self-consumption of electricity generated by rooftop photovoltaic systems has grown in recent years,
fueled by decreasing levelized costs of electricity and feed-in tariffs as well as increasing end customer electricity prices in
the residential sector. This also fostered research on grid-connected PV-battery storage systems, which are a promising
technology to increase self-consumption. In this paper a mixed-integer linear optimization model of a PV-battery system
that minimizes the total discounted operating and investment costs is developed. The model is employed to study the
effect of the temporal resolution of electrical load and PV generation profiles on the rate of self-consumption and the
optimal sizing of PV and PV-battery systems. In contrast to previous studies high resolution (10 s) measured input
data for both PV generation and electrical load profiles is used for the analysis. The data was obtained by smart meter
measurements in 25 different households in Germany. It is shown that the temporal resolution of load profiles is more
critical for the accuracy of the determination of self-consumption rates than the resolution of the PV generation. For
PV-systems without additional storage accurate results can be obtained by using 15 min solar irradiation data. The
required accuracy for the electrical load profiles depends strongly on the load profile characteristics. While good results
can be obtained with 60 s for all electrical load profiles, 15 min data can still be sufficient for load profiles that do not
exhibit most of their electricity consumption at power levels above 2 kW. For PV-battery systems the influence of the
temporal resolution on the rate of self-consumption becomes less distinct. Depending on the load profile, temporal
resolutions between 5 min and 60 min yield good results. For optimal sizing of the PV power and the storage capacity a
resolution of 60 min is found to be sufficient. For the sizing of the battery inverter power of the storage system, a finer
temporal resolution of at least 300 s is necessary.
Keywords: photovoltaics (PV), PV-battery system, home battery storage, electrical household load profile, optimal
storage sizing

1. Introduction end customer electricity prices especially in the residential

1.1. Motivation
In recent years the interest in self-consumption of elec-
tricity generated by rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems has
grown due to its economical attractiveness. This also lead
to an increased research interest in grid-connected battery
storage systems [1–3], while in the past such systems were
mainly applied in off-grid applications [4, 5]. In Germany
this was pushed by an update of the renewable-energy-act
(EEG) [6] that incentivized self-consumption between 2009
and 2012, rendering it economically more attractive than
grid feed-in [1, 7, 8]. Beyond the introduction of dedicated
incentives, the business case of self-consumption benefits
from decreasing levelized costs of electricity (LCOE) and
feed-in tariffs (FIT) on the one hand [9, 10], and increasing
∗ Corresponding author, Tel.: +49 711 811-27701
Email address: Tobias.Beck3@de.bosch.com (T. Beck)
sector on the other hand [11].
In this paper a mixed integer linear optimization model
that determines the optimum system configuration (grid
only, PV only, PV-battery) and the optimal sizing of its
components under the given economic assumptions is de-
veloped. The influence of the temporal resolution of elec-
trical load and PV generation profiles on both the esti-
mation of self-consumption rates and the optimal sizing of
PV and PV-battery is investigated with an emphasis on
the load profile characteristics.
General relationships between the required temporal
resolution of the input data and the accuracy of the final
results could help to increase the quality of future system
designs while decreasing the required computational effort.
Furthermore the results are believed to provide assistance
in the reduction of uncertainties in the economical and
technical evaluation of self-consumption driven PV and
PV-battery systems.

Preprint submitted to Elsevier January 30, 2017

1.2. Literature review to detailed technical analysis of the power electronics and
In this section a brief overview of the scientific liter- battery behavior, which require dynamic models, simpli-
ature on PV-battery systems for residential applications fied energy flow models are applicable for operation of the
is presented, as it is the most common and promising ap- overall system [29]. Approaches comprise linear and mixed
proach to increase self-consumption of locally generated integer-linear programming [30, 31], dynamic programing
electricity [12]. In contrast to battery storage, the poten- [32], model predictive control [18] as well as neural net-
tial of demand-side management to increase self-consumption works [33]. The importance of forecast based operating
is regarded as rather low [13]. In addition to technical re- strategies is pointed out by Weniger et al. [34]. Masa-Bote
search areas like power electronics and battery aging, a lot et al. [35] proved that advanced forecasting methods com-
of research was done on the value of PV-battery storage bined with local energy storage can lead to a significant
systems for the customer as well as for the electricity grid. improvement in the quality of the forecast of grid feed-in
Common topologies for PV-battery systems include DC- by PV systems.
and AC-coupled systems [14]. Besides the DC/AC or the Besides the technological challenges described in the
AC/DC inverter (depending on the topology), the main previous paragraphs, the influence of self-consumption on
components of the storage system are the DC/DC battery the economics of PV and PV-battery systems have a pro-
converter and the battery. Detailed simulations for the nounced position in the scientific literature. This is es-
power electronics of a high efficiency DC/DC converter pecially important for the implementation of novel tech-
were carried out by Bragard et al. [15]. Nge et al. [16] nological concepts and modeling approaches in residential
proposed a simplified approach to optimize the control energy systems based on renewable energies. Early model
strategy with regard to the inverter efficiency. Detailed based approaches include estimation of self-consumption
simulations on the aging behavior of lithium ion batter- and self-sufficiency rates as well as sizing [1–3]. The im-
ies have been carried out [17], as well as approaches to portance of realistic load profiles is pointed out by Linssen
incorporate battery aging into the control and operating et al. [36], who also recommend further research on the
strategies [18–20]. impact of high temporal resolution load and generation
In addition to the economical benefit by increasing self- profiles. Systematic analysis of self-consumption rates for
consumption, the main driver for decentralized electricity different locations and load profiles in Germany were car-
storage applications is the possibility of reducing the peak ried out by Tjaden et al. [37]. With respect to optimal siz-
loading of the electricity grids. However it can be shown ing different approaches can be categorized. Besides exem-
that storage systems that only maximize self-consumption plary calculations, sensitivity analysis [1, 38, 39] and rather
don’t constitute a benefit for the electricity grids [21, 22]. heuristic methods [3, 40], some publications also employ a
Therefore different operating modes and strategies have linear optimization approach [30, 41]. This methodology
been proposed to overcome that problem and simulations is also frequently used for sizing of microgrids [42, 43] and
show that a grid-friendly operation of PV-battery sys- is particularly useful in finding the optimal system com-
tems can yield a significant benefit for the electrical grids position. Optimum community storage configurations are
[21, 23, 24]. The provision of ancillary services by PV- investigated in [44]. All mentioned approaches focus on
battery systems can also be a valuable contribution to the the optimal sizing of a PV-battery system, instead of find-
integration of large amounts of PV into the electricity grids ing the optimal system configuration (grid only, PV only,
[25]. PV-battery) and the optimal sizing of the system compo-
PV-battery systems have been also subject to research nents.
with respect to political boundary conditions and with re-
spect to their environmental impact. The economic effects 1.3. Temporal resolution of load and PV profiles
of different electricity tariffs are investigated by Parra and All scientific works mentioned so far have to rely on
Patel [26] and Jargstorf et al. [27], which highlights the im- load profiles of the residential electricity consumption and
portance of political and regulatory boundary conditions PV generation profiles as input data. Typically it is very
for the economics of self-consumption. McKenna et al. [28] hard to obtain measured load profiles, especially in tempo-
point out the negative environmental impact of lead-acid ral resolutions in the order of magnitude of seconds. The
batteries (due to production and use over lifetime) as well same holds true for PV profiles as irradiation data for arbi-
as their poor economic efficiency. trary locations can typically be obtained with a temporal
Optimized operating strategies have been a widely re- resolution of 15 min at the most. It is therefore crucial to
searched topic on PV-battery systems. The papers em- gain detailed knowledge on the influence of the temporal
ploy different modeling approaches and often apply fore- resolution of the input data on the results of simulations
cast based strategies. Besides contributions to grid topics and optimization works.
(see previous paragraph), the focus lies on the optimization Several papers deal with the influence of the tempo-
of the rate of self-consumption of storage systems. In the ral resolution on PV self-consumption. Wille-Haussmann
future this might be encouraged due to variable electricity et al. [45] analyzed the error on self-consumption rates
prices, variable feed-in tariffs or feed-in limits. In contrast for PV systems. The temporal resolution of the PV pro-
files was varied between 10 s and 15 min and resulted in
2
an overestimation of the rate of self-consumption of up to
2 %. However the influence of the temporal resolution of
the load profiles was not studied and synthetic instead of
measured load profiles were used.
Cao and Sirén [46] proposed a number of indices to
express the matching capabilities between on-site energy
generation and demand and carried out a detailed case-
study. Synthetic electrical load profiles and real irradia-
tion data in 1 min temporal resolution was used, however
only single days and not a whole year could be analyzed.
The authors conclude that with a coarser temporal resolu-
tion the self-consumption is overestimated. However they
don’t recommend a preferred resolution for future works,
as the results vary significantly between different simula-
tions. This could be a result of the fact that only single
days were analyzed. Extreme load or weather conditions
are more likely to be overestimated by such an analysis.
Additionally the impact of the PV and load profiles is not
discussed separately, which does not allow one to attribute
the results to the type of load profile. Adding a battery to
the system resulted in a remarkable decrease in the influ-
ence of the temporal resolution.
Wyrsch, N. et al. [47] analyze the impact of both the
load profile and the PV generation profile separately for
PV and PV-battery systems. High resolution load data
(6 − 12 s) and PV data (60 s) is used, however only one
electrical load profile was used, which limits generalization
of the results. The authors recommend a resolution of at
least 30 s for the load profile and 10 min for the PV profile
for PV systems which both yield errors of less than 3 %.
For the PV-battery system they found the influence of the
temporal resolution to be almost negligible.
In contrast to the three previous publications, Braun
et al. [48] come to the conclusion that the rate of self-
consumption is underestimated by an increase of the simu-
lation time step. No detailed description of the input data
is provided, as the study didn’t focus on the influence of
the temporal resolution, but rather on the applicability of
the employed simulation model. Therefore the reasons for
the discrepancy to the remaining publications cannot be
ascertained.
1.4. Goal and structure of the paper
In this paper the influence of the temporal resolution
of electrical load as well as PV generation profiles on the
rate of self-consumed electricity is investigated for PV as
well as PV-battery systems. This allows us to draw con-
clusions about the role of simultaneousness of PV gener-
ation and electrical load as well as about the role of the
flexibility added through a battery storage system. In the
previous section it was shown that the scientific literature
on this topic exhibits some limitations and inconsistencies
[45–48]. In contrast to these previous publications high
resolution (10 s) measured input data is used for both the
electrical load and the PV generation. To account for the
impact of different user types, measured data for seven
different households is used. Additionally, the impact of
3
the temporal resolution on the optimal system configura-
tion and sizing of PV and PV-battery systems is studied
by means of a mixed integer linear programming (MILP)
optimization model. The main research questions can be
summarized as follows:
• What is the influence of the temporal resolution of
the electrical load and PV generation profiles on the
rate of self-consumption of PV and PV-battery sys-
tems?
• How does the temporal resolution of the electrical
load and PV generation profile influence the optimal
sizing of PV and PV-battery systems?
• How do the characteristics of the electrical load pro-
files affect the errors due to the changing temporal
resolution?
The remainder of this paper is divided into four sec-
tions. Section 2 provides an overview of the optimization
model and the electrical household load and PV genera-
tion profiles used for the analysis. Section 3 presents the
results on the influence of the temporal resolution on the
rate of self-consumption for PV and PV-battery systems.
Subsequently, the effect of the temporal resolution on the
optimal investment decision in PV and PV-battery sys-
tems is investigated in section 4. Section 5 completes the
paper with concluding remarks and recommendations for
appropriate temporal resolutions.
2. Input data and optimization model
This section provides an overview of the electrical load
profiles and the PV generation profiles used as input data
for this study. Subsequently the optimization model devel-
oped and employed for this study is presented, followed by
a brief description of the general economic assumptions.
2.1. Input data
The input data for this study was obtained by smart
meter measurements in 25 different households (subsequently
denoted by HH) across Germany during the years of 2010-
2013. Electrical load profiles are available for all house-
holds with a temporal resolution of the measurements of
approximately 2s. Generation profiles for PV are also
available for some households. For better data handling
the measured data was rescaled to an equally spaced tem-
poral resolution of 10s.
2.1.1. Electrical load profiles
Seven load profiles covering a broad range of energy
consumptions (3053 − 6230 kWh/a) and residents (2 − 5)
were chosen for this study (see table 1). Only profiles
with less than 5 % missing data during one year were used
and missing data and measurement errors were corrected
manually based on previous and subsequent days in the
data sets. HH17 is equipped with a direct-electrical hot
water heater, which yields a much higher peak power of
up to 20 kW compared to all other load profiles. This is
mentioned here in advance with regard to results presented
in sections 3 and 4.
Table 1: Overview of electrical load profiles of seven exemplary
households (obtained by smart meter measurements; original
temporal resolution: 2 s, rescaled to equally spaced 10 s)
Identifier
Annual electricity
Residents
consumption [kWh/a]
HH1 3053 4 letters. The detailed formulations of the components of
HH4 3702 4 the target function can be obtained from equations (2),
HH5 3454 2 (3) and (4).
HH6 4317 4 X grid2load
HH8 4740 5 C grid =
HH13 5818 2 t
HH17 6230 4
2.1.2. PV generation profile
Experimental data was obtained by one of the house-
holds of the smart meter measurement campaign. For fur-
ther processing the profile was normalized by the rated
peak power (5.2 kWp ) which subsequently allows rescaling
to the desired rated peak power. The annual energy yield
of the non-normalized data is 5250 kWh. The advantage
of the experimental data is the high temporal resolution,
which makes it suitable for the analysis of the influence of
the temporal resolution carried out in this paper. For siz-
ing applications, however it is often not possible to obtain
such detailed data for arbitrary locations, as it is typically
available in a temporal resolution of at most 15 min.
2.2. Model description
The study is carried out by applying a mixed integer
linear programming model written in GAMS (General Al-
gebraic Modeling System) with CPLEX used as the solver
for the resulting optimization problem. The model can be
run in two different modes, operation and investment &
operation. The optimization of the annual operation ap-
plies a purely linear approach, whereas the optimization
of the investment decision requires binary variables to ac-
count for the fixed investment costs.
Profiles for the electrical load and the PV generation
have to be supplied as input data. The optimization model
then calculates for each time step the optimal power flows
between the PV system, the battery, the electrical grid and
the electrical load of the household. All power flows are
defined as positive variables. In investment & operation
mode, the model also decides on the system configuration
(grid only, PV, PV-battery) and the optimal sizing of the
main components (PV power, battery capacity, battery
inverter power).
4
2.2.1. Target function
The target of the optimization is the minimization of
total discounted electricity costs. The formulation of the
total annual operation costs is given in equation (1).
C total = C grid + C op,fix − Rev (1)
It consists of the costs for electricity from the grid
C grid , fixed costs for operation and maintenance C op,fix
and the revenues Rev due to a feed-in tariff. All com-
ponents of the target function are written in upper case
Pt · cgrid (2)
C op,fix = cop,fix,pv + cop,fix,bat (3)
X pv2grid
Rev = Pt · cfit,pv (4)
t
The variables Ptgrid2load and Ptpv2grid denote the power
that is consumed from the grid or fed into the grid respec-
tively. All cost terms refer to averaged annualized costs.
Terms written in lower case letters (cgrid , cfit,pv , cop,fix,pv ,
cop,fix,bat ) denote fixed and variable costs that relate to a
specific technology. The annualization is carried out ac-
cording to the following two equations by multiplying the
total discounted costs c0 with the annuity factor af . The
definition of the annuity factor refers to the annuity in
advance, the discount rate is denoted by i.
t=T
X ct

c0 = (5)
(1 + i)t
t=0
(1 + i)
T −1
·i
af = T
(6)
(1 + i) − 1
The value of self-consumed electricity is implicitly ac-
counted for by the reduction of electricity purchases from
the grid. As long as the electricity price exceeds the feed-in
tariff, self-consumption of generated electricity is econom-
ically more attractive than feeding it to the grid. Thus
the optimization model maximizes self-consumption and
only feeds electricity to the grid if it can’t be consumed lo-
cally. This can happen if the generation exceeds the load
for a system without battery or the battery is already fully
charged.
The target function for investment mode additionally
incorporates variable and fixed investment costs (C inv,var ,
C inv,fix ). Subject to the investment decision are the rated
peak power of the PV system P rat,pv , the rated storage
capacity of the battery Caprat,bat and the rated power of
the battery inverter P rat,bat . The updated target function
for investment mode can then be formulated as follows:
C total = C grid + C op,fix + C inv,var + C inv,fix − Rev (7)
 The variable and fixed investment costs (C inv,var , C inv,fix )
Ptpv2grid
are calculated according to equations (8) and (9) respec- Grid
tively. The variable investment costs are obtained by mul-
tiplying the investment variables (P rat,pv , Caprat,bat , P rat,bat )
Ptgrid2load
with their corresponding specific costs, where cinv,var,pv de-
note the costs per PV power, cinv,var,cap,bat the costs per
rated battery capacity and cinv,var,p,bat the costs per rated Ptbat,out · η bat,out
Ptpv2load Balance of
PV Ptbat,in /η bat,in Battery
power of the battery. power flows

C inv,var = P rat,pv · cinv,var,pv + P rat,bat · cinv,var,p,bat Dt

rat,bat inv,var,cap,bat
(8)
+ Cap ·c
End-Use
C inv,fix = Inv pv · C inv,fix,pv + Inv bat · C inv,fix,bat (9)
The binary variable indicating the investment decision Figure 1: Visualization of possible power flows between PV
in an PV system Inv pv or a battery system Inv bat are electricity generation, battery storage, electricity grid and end-
subject to equations (10) and (11). use (electrical household load), according to the load balance
equation (12)
P rat,pv − P max,pv · Inv pv ≤ 0 (10)

Caprat,bat − Capmax,bat · Inv bat ≤ 0 (11)

If an investment decision in a PV or battery system is
made, the corresponding binary variable Inv pv or Inv bat
is set to 1 and the fixed investment costs are accounted
for in equation (9). If no investment is carried out, the
model sets the binary variables to 0 and the fixed costs
are not accounted for. These formulations also ensure that
the maximum power P max,pv for the PV system and the
maximum capacity Capmax,bat for the battery cannot be
exceeded. The installed PV power is limited by the avail-
able roof area, whereas the battery capacity is typically
only limited by the available volume of the system.
2.2.2. Load balance equation
The main constraint of the optimization model is the
load balance equation. It ensures that the electricity de-
mand Dt of the household is satisfied at all times, accord-
ing to equation (12).
Dt = Ptpv2load + Ptgrid2load
(12)
P bat,in
− tbat,in + Ptbat,out · η bat,out
η 2.2.4. Storage system
The electricity demand of the household can be satis-
fied by PV (Ptpv2load ), by the battery (Ptbat,out ) or by the
grid (Ptgrid2load ). Excess PV power can be stored in the
battery (Ptbat,in ) or fed into the grid (Ptpv2grid ). The struc-
ture of the load balance constraint implies an AC coupled
PV-battery system. A visualization of the different power
flows is provided by figure 1.
The load balance equation describes the power flows
between the different system components. Additionally
there are specific constraints for the PV generator and the
battery storage, which are described in the following two
sections.
5
2.2.3. PV system
The output of the PV generator is the AC power pro-
duced by the PV system. Therefore it consists of the PV
modules and the PV inverter. As described before, the
PV generation is not calculated within the model but the
profile is provided exogenously. Therefore the profiles can
be taken from experimental measurements or from a sim-
ulation model, which makes the model very well suited for
the analysis carried out in this paper. The PV generation
Ptpv is calculated by multiplying the normalized PV gen-
eration profile profilepv rat,pv
t with the rated peak power P
according to equation (13).
Ptpv ≤ P rat,pv · profilepv
t (13)
As the power from the PV generator can be consumed
locally (directly or via the battery) or fed into the grid,
the different power flows have to satisfy the following con-
straint as well.
Ptpv = Ptpv2grid + Ptpv2load (14)
The battery storage system is modeled according to the
following set of equations. The storage constraint enforces
the conservation of stored electricity between time steps,
where the state of charge of the battery (SOC) is defined
as the ratio between the stored electrical energy and the
rated capacity of the battery.
SOCt+1 = SOCt · η bat
  (15)
+ Ptbat,in · ∆t − Ptbat,out · ∆t /Caprat,bat
The power flows in and out of the battery are denoted
by Ptbat,in and Ptbat,out and are defined as positive vari-
ables. Charge and discharge efficiencies are accounted for
in equation (12) and also include the efficiency of the bat-
tery inverter. Additionally a certain percentage of the
stored electricity is lost due to the self-discharge of the
battery. The self-discharge rate is modeled via η bat . The
self-discharge of lithium ion batteries is neglected in this
analysis as it is very low (0.1 − 0.3 %/day [49]).
To keep the model linear, charging and discharging of
the battery within one time step is allowed. However ac-
cording to constraint (16) the sum of the charge and dis-
charge power must not exceed the rated power of the bat-
tery inverter within one time step (see also [50] for a similar
formulation).
Ptbat,in + Ptbat,out ≤ P rat,bat (16)
Under normal operating conditions the model has no
incentive for simultaneous charging and discharging and
therefore constraint (16) will limit either Ptbat,in or Ptbat,out
to the maximum rated power of the battery inverter P rat,bat .
Equation (17) initializes the storage content at the first
time step of the optimization period to the minimum state
of charge in percent of the rated capacity.
SOCt=1 = SOC min · Caprat,bat (17)
3. Influence of the temporal resolution of load and
PV profiles on the level of self-consumption
In this section the optimization model is run in oper-
ation mode only to investigate the influence of the tem-
poral resolution of the input load and PV profiles on the
self-consumption for a PV and a PV-battery system. As
long as the electricity price is higher than the feed-in tar-
iff, the resulting operating strategy is to maximize self-
consumption.
A PV system with a rated power of 5 kW is chosen
as standard for this analysis. The standard PV-battery
system has a nominal capacity of 3 kWh and a battery in-
verter power of 1.5 kW. Additionally, PV powers of 2.5 kW
and 10 kW and battery inverter powers of 3 kW and 5 kW
are employed for parameter variations. An overview of the
systems is presented in table 3.
Table 3: Overview on analyzed systems (PV, PV-battery)
System P rat,pv [kW] Caprat,bat [kWh] P rat,bat [kW]
PV 2.5, 5, 10 n.a. n.a.
PV-Bat 5 3 1.5, 3, 5

Minimum and maximum storage level of the battery
are enforced by constraints (18) and (19).
SOCt ≥ SOC min · Caprat,bat
SOCt ≤ SOC max · Caprat,bat
For the battery system the SOC of the battery the
lower limit of the usable capacity is SOC min = 10% and
the upper limit is SOC max = 90%. Charging η bat,in and
discharging efficiency η bat,out are assumed to be 95% for
this study.
2.3. General economic parameters
As the model is driven by the minimization of the total
discounted costs, certain assumptions regarding the eco-
nomic parameters have to be made. An overview of the
general economic assumptions is presented in table 2.
Table 2: General economic assumptions
Parameter Value Unit
Interest rate 5 %/a
Inflation 2 %/a
Electricity price 0.34 e2020 /kWh
Price increase 1.4 %/a
Feed-in tariff 0.05 e2020
The assumptions made in table 2 apply to the model
run both in operation and operation & investment mode.
The detailed assumptions regarding the investment costs
of the system components are not in the scope of the sub-
sequent analysis and are therefore not presented here.
Before the presentation of the results, the rate of self-
consumption and its relative error are introduced. The
rate of self-consumption is defined as the electricity gen-
(18) erated by PV that is consumed locally by the household
E pv,consumed divided by the overall PV generation E pv,generated :
(19)
E pv,consumed
Self-consumption (SC) = (20)
E pv,generated
The relative error of the rate of self-consumption with re-
spect to the finest or baseline temporal resolution is defined
as follows:
|SCT − SCTbaseline |
Relative error SC = (21)
SCTbaseline
For subsequent analyses it is important to understand
the difference between the optimization time step t and
the temporal resolution T of the input profiles. The opti-
mization time step is the discretization of the optimization
model. The temporal resolution of the input profiles de-
scribes the quality of the input data. For example if the
temporal resolution of the load profile is T = 300 s and
the optimization time step ∆t = 10 s, the value of the load
profile doesn’t change for 30 time steps.
3.1. PV system
To study the influence of the temporal resolution of
the PV and the electrical load profile separately, two sets
of calculations are performed. The optimization model is
always run with an optimization time step of ∆t = 10 s.
For the first analysis the temporal resolution of the load
profile is fixed to T = 10 s and the temporal resolution
of the PV profile is varied between 10 s − 3600 s. For the
6
 Relative error self-consumption [%]
40 3
HH1
Self-consumption [%]

35 HH4
2 HH5
30 HH6
HH8
25 HH13
1
HH17
20

15 0
10 30 60 300 900 3600 10 30 60 300 900 3600
T [s] T [s]
(a) Influence of temporal resolution of the PV generation on the (b) Relative error of the rate of self-consumption for the variation
rate of self-consumption of temporal resolution of the PV generation

Figure 2: Variation of the temporal resolution of the PV generation for a PV system (P rat,pv = 5 kW; temporal resolution of load
profiles fixed to T = 10 s , optimization time step ∆t = 10 s)

45 Relative error self-consumption [%] 20

HH1
40
Self-consumption [%]

15 HH4
35 HH5
HH6
30 10 HH8
25 HH13
5 HH17
20
15 0
10 30 60 300 900 3600 10 30 60 300 900 3600
T [s] T [s]
(a) Influence of the temporal resolution of the electrical load on (b) Relative error of the rate of self-consumption for the variation
the rate of self-consumption of temporal resolution of the electrical load

Figure 3: Variation of the temporal resolution of the load profile for a PV system (P rat,pv = 5 kW; temporal resolution of PV
generation fixed to T = 10 s , optimization time step ∆t = 10 s)

second analysis the PV profile is fixed and the load profile
is varied.
The influence of the temporal resolution of the PV pro-
file on the rate of self-consumption is shown in figure 2a.
The rate of self-consumption obviously depends on the
load profile, with its different characteristics (e.g. annual
energy consumption, user behavior). Up to T = 60 s there
is no influence of the temporal resolution observable. For
larger resolutions the self-consumption is slightly overesti-
mated, however even for T = 3600 s the error is below one
percentage point for all load profiles.
A good measure of the accuracy of the results is the rel-
ative error of the rate of self-consumption, which is plotted
in figure 2b. By definition the relative error for T = 10 s
is zero. For T = 300 s the relative error is still less than
1 % and even for the very coarse resolution of T = 3600 s
it is below 3 % for all load profiles.
The influence of the temporal resolution of the electri-
cal load profile on the rate of self-consumption is shown in
figure 3a. In contrast to the variation of the PV resolution,
the influence of the temporal resolution of the electrical
load profile starts to be immediately visible at T = 30 s.
For coarser resolutions than T = 60 s the overestimation
of self-consumption steadily increases up to an overestima-
tion of as much as seven percentage points for load profile
HH17. For the remaining load profiles the error amounts
up to three percentage points at a temporal resolution of
T = 3600 s.
Once again the relative error of the rate of self-consumption
provides a clearer picture of the accuracy of the simula-
tions. Up to a resolution of T = 60 s the relative error
remains smaller than 2 % for all load profiles. For reso-
lutions up to T = 900 s it remains smaller than 6 % for
all load profiles except HH17. For the coarsest resolution
of T = 3600 s the error amounts to as much as 20 % for
HH17 and up to 11 % for the remaining households. A
distinct influence of the different households on the error
can be observed. It has to be kept in mind that the profile
HH17 is somewhat different to the remaining load profiles
because of the fact that hot water generation is carried out

7

60
Self-consumption [%]
40
20
0 0
10 30 60 300 900
T [s]
(a) Influence of the temporal resolution of the electrical load on
the rate of self-consumption for different PV powers P rat,pv =
2.5, 5, 10 kW
Figure 4: Variation of the temporal resolution of the load profile for selected households (HH1, HH6, HH17) for different PV
powers (P rat,pv = 2.5, 5, 10 kW; temporal resolution of PV generation fixed to T = 10 s , optimization time step ∆t = 10 s)
by an electrical hot water boiler, resulting in peak powers
up to 20 kW in the original temporal resolution (T = 10 s).
In figure 4 the influence of different levels of PV gener-
ation is shown for selected households. Figure 4a clearly
shows that the level of self-consumption depends on the
rated power of the PV system. The relative error in the
self-consumption decreases with increasing PV power for
all load profiles (see figure 4b). Only a small influence can
be observed for HH1, while a larger influence is observed
for HH17 for 10 kW and especially for HH6 where the rel-
ative error drops from nearly 15 % to 7.5 % at 3600 s.
3.2. PV-battery system
In this section a PV-battery system is analyzed. Fig-
ure 5 shows the results of the simultaneous variation of the
temporal resolution of both the PV and the load profile.
This is justified by the results obtained in the previous
section, where the errors could be separately attributed to
the load and the generation profiles.
In contrast to the corresponding analysis for the PV
system, the self-consumption hardly changes up to an tem-
poral resolution of T = 900 s for all households except
HH17 (see figure 5a). For household HH17 the influence
of the temporal resolution is much more distinct, which is
in line with the results for the PV system without storage.
For the coarsest temporal resolution the self-consumption
is overestimated by four percentage points for HH17 and
up to one percentage point for the remaining households.
If one excludes profile HH17, the relative error of the
self-consumption stays below 1 % for all load profiles for
temporal resolutions up to 900 s. For the coarsest reso-
lution included in this analysis (T = 3600 s), the relative
error only slightly exceeds 2 % for profiles HH6 and HH13.
Once again HH17 takes an exceptional position, with a
relative error around 5 % for T = 900 s and more than 8 %
for T = 3600 s.
The influence of a variation of the battery inverter
power is presented in figure 6 for the same selection of
Relative error self-consumption [%]
25
HH1,PV=5kW
20 HH1,P=2.5kW
HH1,P=10kW
15 HH6,P=5kW
HH6,P=2.5kW
10 HH6,P=10kW
HH17,P=5kW
5
HH17,P=2.5kW
HH17,P=10kW
3600 10 30 60 300 900 3600
T [s]
(b) Relative error of the rate of self-consumption for the varia-
tion of temporal resolution of the electrical load for different PV
powers P rat,pv = 2.5, 5, 10 kW
households as for the variation of the PV power. An in-
crease of the inverter power from 1.5 kW to 5 kW only has
a significant influence on the level of self-consumption for
HH17 (see figure 6a) and yields a decrease of the corre-
sponding relative error in self-consumption from more than
8 % to 5 % at 3600 s in figure 6b.
3.3. Discussion of the results
In this section the results of the previous two sections
are discussed briefly. This is carried out with special re-
gard to the implications for the optimization of the invest-
ment decision which is subject to section 4.
3.3.1. Load profile characteristics
To gain a deeper understanding of the results, the load
duration curve and the power vs. energy curve for the
seven household load profiles are presented in figure 7.
The load profiles are shown in the original resolution of
T = 10 s (solid lines) and in the coarsest resolution of
T = 3600 s (dashed lines) to illustrate the deformation of
the curves due to the time averaging effect. According to
the load duration curves from figure 7a, the profiles can
be categorized in two groups. While a clear deformation
of the load duration curve is visible for HH6, HH13 and
HH17, the influence is less pronounced for HH1, HH4, HH5
and HH8. The same effect can be seen in figure 7b, where
the remaining annual energy above a certain power level
is presented. It can also be observed that for HH6, HH13
a lot of the annual energy consumption is above the power
level of 1 kW and for HH17 even above 2 kW.
3.3.2. PV system
It can be observed that the rate of self-consumption is
less sensitive on the temporal resolution of the PV profile
than of the temporal resolution of the load profile. This
can be explained with the larger and more frequent fluctu-
ations in the electrical load profiles. As already described
8
 Relative error self-consumption [%]
55 10
HH1
Self-consumption [%]

50 8 HH4
HH5
45 6 HH6
HH8
40 4 HH13
HH17
35 2

30 0
10 30 60 300 900 3600 10 30 60 300 900 3600
T [s] T [s]
(a) Influence of the temporal resolution of PV generation and (b) Relative error of the self-consumption of the temporal reso-
electrical load profiles on self-consumption lution of PV generation and electrical load profiles

Figure 5: Simultaneous variation of the temporal resolution of the PV and electrical load profile for a PV-battery system (P rat,pv =
5 kW, Caprat,bat = 3 kWh, P rat,bat = 1.5 kW; temporal resolution equals optimization time step T = ∆t )

55 Relative error self-consumption [%] 10

HH1,P=1.5kW
Self-consumption [%]

50 8 HH1,P=3kW
HH1,P=5kW
45 6 HH6,P=1.5kW
HH6,P=3kW
40 4 HH6,P=5kW
HH17,P=1.5kW
35 2
HH17,P=3kW
HH17,P=5kW
30 0
10 30 60 300 900 3600 10 30 60 300 900 3600
T [s] T [s]
(a) Influence of the temporal resolution of PV generation and (b) Relative error of the self-consumption of the temporal reso-
electrical load profiles on self-consumption for different battery lution of PV generation and electrical load profiles for different
inverter powers P rat,bat = 1.5, 3, 5 kW battery inverter powers P rat,bat = 1.5, 3, 5 kW

Figure 6: Simultaneous variation of the temporal resolution of the PV and electrical load profile for a PV-battery system for
different battery inverter powers P rat,bat = 1.5, 3, 5 kW and selected households (HH1, HH6, HH17; Caprat,bat = 3 kWh; temporal
resolution equals optimization time step T = ∆t )

in section 2.1.2, high resolution irradiation data is typi-
cally not available for arbitrary locations. Common data
sources [51] provide 15 min data, which seems to be suffi-
cient for the analysis of PV systems due to the very small
error (around 1 %) implied by a temporal resolution of
T = 900 s of the PV profile (see figure 2) .
Figures 3 and 4 indicate that the error in self-consumption
does not only depend on the temporal resolution but also
on the characteristics of the electrical load profiles. Es-
pecially HH17 shows much higher errors than the remain-
ing households. The reason for the different behavior of
this household can be obtained from the inverted power
to energy curve illustrated in figure 7b. The deformation
of the curve is clearly visible for power levels above ap-
proximately 1 kW. Additionally more than 3000 kWh of
the annual energy consumption take place at power lev-
els above 2 kW. Similar observations can be made for HH6
and HH8. Both households show a similar annual energy
consumption, however their load duration and power to en-
9
ergy curves differ a lot. In HH8 most energy consumption
takes place below 1 kW, while in HH6 a large portion of
the consumption takes place above 1 kW. Among all load
profiles this leads to the second largest errors for HH6 and
to the second smallest errors for HH8. In general it can be
stated that the more energy is consumed above approx-
imately 1 kW, the higher are the corresponding relative
errors.
3.3.3. PV-battery system
Compared to the corresponding analysis for a PV sys-
tem (see figures 2 - 4) the influence of the temporal reso-
lution of the input profiles is clearly less pronounced for a
PV-battery system (see figure 5). This can be attributed
to the additional flexibility, which is introduced by means
of the battery storage system. When adding a storage sys-
tem the simultaneousness of electrical load and PV gener-
ation becomes less important, as electricity can be shifted
between time steps.
 4 6000
HH1,T=10s
Remaining Energy [kWh]
3 HH4,T=10s
HH5,T=10s
Power [kW]
HH6,T=10s
2 HH8,T=10s
HH13,T=10s
1 HH17,T=10s
HH1,T=3600s
0 0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000
Time [h]
(b) Inverted power to energy curve (annual energy above a certain
(a) Load duration curve (duration of power levels during one year)
power level)
Figure 7: Detailed information about the electrical household load profiles for minimum and maximum temporal resolution
considered in this study (solid lines: T = 10 s, dashed lines: T = 3600 s)
For HH17 the battery does not reduce the effect as
strongly as for the remaining profiles. This results from the
fact that the battery inverter power is only 1.5 kW, which
is relatively low with regard to the peak loads of HH17.
Larger battery inverter powers (P rat,bat = 3 and 5 kW)
reduce the relative error in self-consumption, however due
to the characteristics of HH17 (see figure 7) there still re-
main differences to the other households. Theoretically a
battery with an even higher battery inverter power and
larger battery capacities could reduce the error even fur-
ther (see [46] for an analysis carried out with no power
limitation on the battery inverter). However, in real ap-
plications battery inverters typically exhibit powers in the
range applied here. The results for optimally sized PV-
battery systems obtained in the next section, also lead to
rather small battery inverter sizes (see also section 4.2).
3.3.4. Recommendations for the temporal resolution for
modeling purposes
The results discussed so far give confidence in using
15 min irradiation data, which can be typically obtained
for arbitrary locations. For most load profiles a temporal
resolution of 15 min is sufficient to achieve acceptable rela-
tive errors of less than 5 %. However, for load profiles that
exhibit large amounts of the annual energy consumption
at power levels above 2 kW, such as HH17, a temporal res-
olution of 60 s should not be exceeded for the load profiles
in order to obtain reliable self-consumption rates through
simulations. For PV-battery systems the influence of the
temporal resolution becomes almost negligible for all elec-
trical load profiles except HH17. A temporal resolution of
300 s yields adequate results for all load profiles. However,
depending on the load profile characteristics, resolutions
of up to 60 min can be still sufficient.
For both PV and PV-Battery systems, the temporal
resolution should be treated carefully for households, that
show power-energy curves that exhibit a lot of the annual
energy consumption at power levels above 2 kW, as their
10
4000
2000
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Power [kW]
load duration and power to energy curves are stronger af-
fected by time averaging in power ranges relevant to self-
consumption.
3.4. Comparison of the results to the literature
A detailed overview of the results from previous publi-
cations on the influence of the temporal resolution of load
and PV profiles was carried out in section 1.3. Braun et al.
[48] concluded, that an increase in the optimization time
step leads to an underestimation of the self-consumption.
This is in contradiction to the remaining publications [45–
47] and the results obtained so far in this paper and is
therefore not discussed further. Possible reasons for this
discrepancy were already discussed in detail in the litera-
ture review in section 1.3.
Wyrsch, N. et al. [47] recommend a temporal resolution
of 10 min for the PV profile and 30 s for the electrical load
profile for an error below 3 % for the PV-systems and sim-
ilar errors of 2 % are reported in Wille-Haussmann et al.
[45] for PV profiles at a temporal resolution of 15 min. This
is in good agreement to the results obtained so far. The
differences in the results for PV-battery systems from [47]
can be explained by the missing limitation of the battery
charging/discharging power as well as the fact that only
one electric load profile was considered in their study.
The most detailed investigation is carried out by Cao
and Sirén [46]. For single days they observe that the er-
rors in self-consumption can vary extremely for different
electrical load profiles and generation powers. Therefore
they do not give a general recommendation on the required
temporal resolution but provide general conclusions de-
pending on the characteristics of the generation and the
demand profiles instead. This is very helpful to identify
cases where sufficient care has to be taken in order to avoid
large errors due to the chosen temporal resolution. The er-
rors observed in this study are much smaller, however as
annual simulations are carried out, the results are not di-
rectly comparable. It is very likely that days with extreme
errors will be leveled out over the course of an entire year. 8
The load duration curves of the profiles used in this study
are smoother compared to the ones used in [46], where HH1
6 HH4
larger errors often occurred in regions of the electrical load

Prat,pv [kW]
profiles with long sharp spikes that lead to steep regions in HH5
4 HH6
the duration curve. The errors for annual simulations can
HH8
therefore be expected to be smaller for the smoother du- HH13
ration curves employed in this paper. The reason for the 2
HH17
differences in the load duration curves can originate from
the differences between daily and annual profiles as well as 0
from the differences between measured and synthetically 10 30 60 300 900 3600
T [s]
generated profiles.
For the PV-battery system larger errors are observed in Figure 8: Influence of simultaneous variation of the temporal
this paper compared to [46]. This can be attributed to the resolution of the PV and electrical load profile on optimal in-
stalled PV peak power for a PV system (temporal resolution
limitation of the battery converter power applied in this
equals optimization time step T = ∆t )
study. In figure 6 it is clearly shown that larger battery
converter powers lead to smaller errors in the rate of self-
consumption. For real applications and optimal sized PV-
battery systems, battery inverter powers are rather low 300 s the relative error stays well below 5 % for all house-
compared to the peak powers in the load profiles (see also holds except HH17. The largest relative error observed for
section 4.2), which motivates the limitation of the battery 3600 s amounts to 9 % for HH17, which corresponds to an
converter power in this study. absolute error of 500 W.

4. Influence of the temporal resolution of load and Table 4: Relative and absolute errors for optimal PV power
PV profiles on the optimal sizing of PV and P rat,pv for selected temporal resolutions (T = 300 s, 3600 s);
PV-battery systems the absolute error for the optimal PV power is defined as:
P rat,pv = |PTrat,pv − PTrat,pv rat,pv
=10 |, the relative error as: |PT −
rat,pv rat,pv
For the subsequent analysis the model is run in invest- PT =10 |/PT =10
ment & operation mode for economic parameters expected relative error [%] absolute error [W]
for the year 2020. To reduce calculation time, the smallest Identifier 300 s 3600 s 300 s 3600 s
time step for the optimization of the PV-battery system is
30 s, which is justified by the results obtained in section 3. HH1 0.3 5.9 5.9 107.9
Additionally, the system configuration for the PV-battery HH4 3.6 7.5 75.3 154.9
HH5 0.6 3.0 16.8 90.8
system is predefined by fixing the corresponding binary
HH6 1.5 2.5 54.1 88.5
variables to decrease the required computation time.
HH8 0.3 0.5 8.5 17.0
HH13 0.4 0.8 15.7 33.0
4.1. PV system HH17 5.8 9.0 319.6 499.6
In this scenario the model optimizes the investment de-
cision in a PV system subject to economic parameters for
the year 2020. The model can choose between obtaining 4.2. PV-battery system
all electricity from the grid or to invest in a PV system
In the following investigation the scope of the analysis
and determine its optimal size.
is expanded to the investment decision in a storage system.
The results for the optimization of the PV system are
In addition to the size of the PV installation, the model
shown in figure 8. For all households a PV system is
optimizes the size of the battery storage and the power of
installed and the optimal size strongly depends on the
the battery inverter.
load profile. Up to T = 300 s the optimal system size
The results for the PV power and the size of the bat-
is practically independent of the temporal resolution. For
tery are presented in figure 9. The trends of figure 9a
T = 900 s and T = 3600 s minor changes in the optimal
correspond very well to figure 8 and are described in the
PV power are visible, but don’t follow a clear trend. For
previous section. With the exception of HH17 no distinct
HH17 an increase in the optimal PV power is clearly vis-
influence of the temporal resolution on the optimal sys-
ible. For HH1 and HH5 the optimal system size slightly
tem size can be determined. A similar conclusion can be
increases, whereas it slightly decreases or stays constant
drawn from figure 9b. For temporal resolutions up to 900 s
for the remaining households.
almost no influence on the optimal system size is visible.
Table 4 gives an overview of the relative and absolute
For the coarsest temporal resolution T = 3600 s the opti-
errors of the optimal PV power for two selected temporal
mal storage size is slightly underestimated for all house-
resolutions, 300 s and 3600 s. For a temporal resolution of
holds. The relative and absolute errors for the PV power
11
 10 8 3
HH1

Caprat,bat [kWh]
8 HH4

Prat,bat [kW]
Prat,pv [kW]

6 2 HH5
6 HH6
4 1 HH8
4 HH13
HH17
2 2 0
30 60 300 900 3600 30 60 300 900 3600 30 60 300 900 3600
T [s] T [s] T [s]
(a) Influence of temporal resolu- (b) Influence of temporal resolu- (c) Influence of the variation of the temporal resolution on opti-
tion on optimal rated PV peak tion on optimal storage size mization of battery inverter power
power

Figure 9: Influence of simultaneous variation of the temporal resolution of the PV and electrical load profile on optimization of
PV power and storage size for a PV-battery system (temporal resolution equals optimization time step T = ∆t )

and the battery capacity are given in table 5 for 300 s and
3600 s. Compared to the results for a PV system without
storage (see section 4.1), the relative and absolute errors
are even smaller for the PV-battery system. The relative
errors of the battery capacity only exceed 1 % for HH17
for a temporal resolution of 300 s. For 3600 s the largest
relative errors observed are around 7 % for HH 6 and HH8.
The absolute errors of the optimal PV power is in the order
of magnitude of today’s typical PV module sizes (200 W-
300 W) for the coarsest temporal resolution of 3600 s. For
the battery capacity a similar picture can be drawn with
small absolute errors in the range of 100 Wh to 300 Wh
(see table 5).
For all load profiles the optimal power of the battery
inverter is underestimated with increasing temporal res-
olution. This can be attributed to the fact that a lower
temporal resolution reduces the probability of occurrence
of peaks in the load profile.
The relative errors for a temporal resolution of 300 s are
between 5 % and 15 % and increase up to 50 % for HH17 at
a resolution of 3600 s (see table 5). At 3600 s the optimal
inverter power is underestimated by 1363 W for HH17 and
200 W to 500 W for the remaining households.
previously discussed, the storage system adds flexibility to
the entire system, which reduces the importance of simul-
taneousness between the PV generation and the electrical
load profile. The total amount of electricity that can be
self-consumed is limited by the daily PV electricity gen-
eration and the electricity consumption, not so much by
their simultaneousness. This also explains the major im-
pact that the temporal resolution has on the sizing of the
battery inverter power of the storage system. The addi-
tional flexibility the storage system provides can only be
exploited if the battery inverter doesn’t become a bottle-
neck. With a coarser time resolution the need for sufficient
inverter power for charging and discharging of the battery
is therefore underestimated by the optimization model.
The temporal resolution only has a small influence on
the optimal rated PV power and battery capacity; how-
ever the optimal power of the battery inverter is heavily
influenced by the temporal resolution. For sizing of the
PV power and the storage capacity a temporal resolution
of the input profiles of 15 min is recommended. For the
sizing of the battery inverter power, which is heavily influ-
enced by the load profile, a finer temporal resolution of at
least 300 s is recommended.

4.3. Discussion of the results

The influence of the temporal resolution on the optimal
sizing of the PV system as described in figure 8 proved to
be almost negligible for all analyzed temporal resolutions.
This is surprising against the background of the influence
of the temporal resolution on the self-consumption (see
figure 5) but can be explained by the smaller influence of
the temporal resolution of the PV profiles compared to the
electrical load profiles on the overall accuracy.
The rather low influence of the temporal resolution on
the optimal size of the installed PV power and the storage
size is in line with the results of section 3. The influence on
the optimal sizing of the PV power is in fact even smaller
for the PV-battery system compared to the PV system. As
5. Conclusions
In this paper the effect of the temporal resolution of
electrical load and PV generation profiles on the estima-
tion of rates of self-consumption and optimal sizing of PV
and PV-battery systems was studied. In contrast to pre-
vious publications [45–48] a strong emphasize was put on
measured input data for both PV generation and electri-
cal load profiles. For the analysis a mixed integer linear
optimization model of a PV-battery system was developed
and employed. The model can be run in operation and in-
vestment & operation mode and minimizes the total dis-
counted costs to satisfy a household’s demand for electric-
ity. The optimization of the operating strategy is based

12
Table 5: Relative and absolute errors for optimal PV power P rat,pv , battery capacity Caprat,bat and battery inverter power
P rat,bat for selected temporal resolutions (T = 300 s, 3600 s); the absolute error for the optimal PV power is defined as: P rat,pv =
|PTrat,pv − PTrat,pv rat,pv
=30 |, the relative error as: |PT − PTrat,pv rat,pv
=30 |/PT =30 (absolute and relative errors of Cap
rat,bat
and P rat,bat defined
correspondingly)
PV power P rat,pv Battery capacity Caprat,bat Battery inverter power P rat,bat
relative error [%] absolute error [W] relative error [%] absolute error [Wh] relative error [%] absolute error [W]
Identifier
300 s 3600 s 300 s 3600 s 300 s 3600 s 300 s 3600 s 300 s 3600 s 300 s 3600 s
HH1 0.5 1.0 15.6 29.5 0.5 1.0 16.7 31.2 5.3 21.3 42.6 171.6
HH4 0.2 0.6 6.9 20.4 0.4 2.6 14.3 102.5 9.6 33.4 104.3 361.9
HH5 0.2 2.1 5.9 76.8 0.5 5.3 13.1 150.1 8.3 45.0 95.7 522.0
HH6 0.1 1.9 5.9 84.3 0.6 7.5 21.4 290.7 9.0 36.8 128.2 521.6
HH8 1.2 0.5 45.1 18.5 4.9 7.0 125.7 179.4 12.2 35.4 102.1 294.9
HH13 0.3 4.1 14.8 217.0 0.4 2.1 20.1 115.0 8.6 31.9 145.7 542.4
HH17 2.3 3.2 162.5 224.0 1.7 2.9 88.7 147.4 16.3 53.1 419.9 1363.4

on a simplified linear programming approach, whereas the
optimization of the investment decision follows the mixed
integer programing paradigm.
The influence of the temporal resolution of the PV and
load profiles on the rate of self-consumption is studied in
detail. The aim of this analysis is to gain more insight
into the simultaneousness between the PV generation and
the electrical load profile. For PV systems without storage
the results indicate that the temporal resolution of the load
profiles has a much larger impact than the PV profiles. For
future analysis this gives confidence to use 15 min irradia-
tion data, which can be typically obtained for arbitrary lo-
cations. In order to obtain reliable self-consumption rates
through simulations, the required temporal resolution of
the electrical load profiles strongly depends on the char-
acteristics of the electrical load profile. While a temporal
resolution of 60 s yields good results for all load profiles
in this study, 15 min data is still sufficient for load profiles
that do not exhibit most of their electricity consumption at
power levels above 2 kW. For PV-battery systems the influ-
ence of the temporal resolution becomes almost negligible
for most electrical load profiles, which can be attributed
to the additional flexibility introduced by the storage sys-
tem. For electrical load profiles with frequent peak loads
and a large amount of energy consumption at power lev-
els above 2 kW (see HH17), the rate of self-consumption
is sensitive to the temporal resolution for the PV-battery
system as well. This effect is especially visible at low bat-
tery converter powers. A temporal resolution of 300 s leads
to errors of less than 5 % for all load profiles employed in
this study, while temporal resolutions up to 60 min can
be still acceptable depending on the characteristics of the
load profile.
The second part of the paper investigates the impli-
cations of the previous results on the configuration and
sizing of both PV and PV-battery systems. In contrast
to the previous results, the temporal resolution only has
limited influence on the optimal rated PV power and bat-
tery capacity for all employed load profiles. However, the
optimal power of the battery inverter is heavily influenced
by the temporal resolution. It is concluded that for siz-
ing decisions mainly depending on electrical energy (PV
power, storage capacity) rather than the characteristics of
the load profile, a temporal resolution of the input pro-
files of 60 min is sufficient for most load profiles. For the
sizing of components that are strongly influenced by the
load profile characteristics, such as the power of the stor-
age system, a finer temporal resolution of at least 300 s is
recommended.
The results obtained in this study can provide assis-
tance in the reduction of uncertainties in the evaluation of
the economical feasibility of self-consumption driven PV
and PV-battery systems and therefore reduce the associ-
ated investment risks. Thanks to the detailed discussion
of the load profile characteristics, the results can be trans-
fered to arbitrary electrical load profiles and decrease the
calculation time needed for simulation and optimization
calculations. Furthermore, the developed methodology for
optimal configuration and sizing can provide valuable in-
formations for future system designs.
Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the German
Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in the
framework of the publicly funded PV-HOST project (fund-
ing number 0325477A). The authors take full and sole re-
sponsibility for the content of this paper.
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