A comprehensive technical guide to understanding, measuring, and optimizing residential electricity use — from appliance-level consumption data to solar PV sizing, battery storage, and grid tariff strategies.
This book gives homeowners and engineers the quantitative tools to answer the questions that matter: How much electricity does my household actually use? How many solar panels do I need? What battery capacity makes sense? When should I draw from the grid, and when should I rely on stored energy? Is solar thermal worth it for hot water, or is a heat pump water heater better?
Each chapter builds on the previous one, moving from consumption measurement and profiling through generation and storage sizing, to operational strategy and economic analysis. Every claim is backed by data tables, worked formulas, and runnable Python code.
The book is organized in four parts:
Part I — Consumption (Chapters 0–3): Establishes the baseline — what electricity is used, when, and how much.
Part II — Generation and Storage (Chapters 4–6): Covers solar PV fundamentals, system sizing, and battery storage sizing.
Part III — Strategy and Use Cases (Chapters 7–9): Addresses grid tariff optimization, dispatch strategies, and the hot water technology choice.
Part IV — Synthesis and Economics (Chapters 10–11): Full household scenario walkthroughs and investment analysis.
All consumption figures are derived from manufacturer specifications, EU energy labeling databases, and published measurement studies. Where ranges are given, they reflect real-world variation across equipment age, usage patterns, and climates. Specific yield and peak sun hour data come from the PVGIS database (EU JRC). Tariff structures are illustrative examples based on real TOU tariffs; check your local utility for exact figures.
Python code in the code/ directory is designed to be readable and adaptable. Each script runs standalone with sample data and can be composed into scenario_runner.py for end-to-end simulation.