Abstract
For sustainable electric energy supply, the on-site production with photovoltaic systems can be a possibility. For this purpose, it is important to evaluate the potential based on the location, the technical solutions, and also the economic aspects. The present research analyses all those factors for a case study based on a commercial building in Vienna, Austria. In a first step, the energy consumption of the facility was analyzed in detail. Based on the outcome, different cases for optimization and retrofitting were developed. Different scenarios for the installation of PV-systems were evaluated via simulation, covering different fractions of the electricity need and considering the usage of local electricity storage (battery). The results show that using PV systems for covering the base load is more economically convenient and, when also retrofitting of lighting system is considered, interventions to the most inefficient parts are preferred to those to the whole system. Moreover, it was demonstrated that, due to current Austrian practice regarding pricing of PV-generated electricity, overproduction does not pay off, even though it has the potential to reduce the CO2 emission of buildings.