Financial Benefits of PV only, BESS only and PV with BESS under the Trading Arrangements of NEM and ETOU in Malaysia

With the implementation of net energy metering (NEM) and enhanced time-of-use (ETOU) schemes in Malaysia, photovoltaic (PV) owners are now able to reduce their energy consumption charges, and also the demand charges which constitute to as high as 30% of the overall electricity bills. However, due to the inherent variability of PV, a PV only system cannot mitigate demand charges perfectly, and the inclusion of a storage device such as battery-based energy storage system (BESS) can overcome such a limitation. At present, the financial benefits are rather unclear to customers in Malaysia for the integration of BESS with PV as compared to PV only system under the latest electricity trading arrangements of NEM and ETOU. Therefore, three case studies have been carried out to determine the financial benefit to the customers, in which the PV only, BESS only and PV-plus BESS (PV+) systems are examined through simulation in LabVIEW with actual load demands and solar generations from PV recorded at a commercial site in Malaysia. The results show that PV+ system can provide the highest amount of savings in electricity bills compared to the PV only and BESS only configurations.