Abstract—Currently, the production of craft beer in microbreweries has become very popular. This craft beer production process is energy intensive due heating and cooling equipment involved. Most of these breweries are classified as commercial loads which are subjected to the applicable commercial time-of-use tariff from the utility company. Renewable energy sources can also be used to assist the breweries in reducing their reliance on the energy from the grid. However, these systems show a common disadvantage of not always meeting the energy demand during the periods where the resources are not available. In this paper, an optimal energy management model of a 5 kWp grid-connected photovoltaic, using a double tracking system with battery storage, is proposed to reduce the microbrewery’s reliance on the grid. For this purpose, a mathematical model describing the system’s variables, objective function, and constraints are developed. Thereafter, the performance of the developed model is simulated and analyzed using the dynamic load demand of a microbrewery brewery as a case study in the South African context. For the selected brewery, the simulation results have shown that for the solar resources as well as applicable grid tariff; up to 53.5% daily operation cost reduction can be achieved when using the proposed system as comped to the usage of the grid alone.
 

Index Terms—Battery, cost minimization, grid-connected, microbrewery, optimal power dispatch, photovoltaic

Cite: Kanzumba Kusakana, "Optimal Energy Management of a Double-Tracking Grid-Connected Photovoltaic with Battery System for a Microbrewery," International Journal of Electrical and Electronic Engineering & Telecommunications, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 133-138, March 2021. Doi: 10.18178/ijeetc.10.2.133-138