Improving energy security for individual households during outages : A simulation study for households in Sweden

Sammanfattning: In this study, it was investigated how individual households could manage security of supply during an outage by installing a local energy system that could operate independently from the electricity grid. By installing local renewable off-grid energy systems, households could guarantee an uninterrupted supply of energy even during an outage on the electricity grid, while also increasing their energy autonomy during normal circumstances. The results showed that managing an outage during summer was fairly easy. Due to high electricity production, a small energy storage was enough to manage an outage during summer. However, managing an outage during winter was more critical. During winter, the systems needed to be almost fully reliant on the energy storage. This significantly increased the cost of these systems. Due to the high cost for the energy systems today, it was not considered a feasible solution to improve energy security at a national level. However, at a local level, this was considered to have the potential to improve energy security. First, it could to be of interest for people who already have installed solar panels, who could add a battery and thereby be able to manage an outage during summer. Second, it could be of interest for people who are more exposed to outages or have a low trust in the system to work properly. Lastly, this could be of interest for actors for whom backup energy is important, for instance for the industry.