Life cycle assessment of PV‐battery systems for a cloakroom and club building in Zurich

The Office for Building Engineering of the City of Zurich plans the construction of a cloakroom and club building. The building and the floodlights of the surrounding soccer fields use electricity mainly in the evening. That is why the installation of a photovoltaic (PV) system in combination with a battery storage system is evaluated in the pre-project phase. The environmental footprint of the PV system with multi-crystalline silicon modules and of current, future, and second-life lithium-ion batteries is quantified within the life cycle assessment of the building. The self-consumption share of PV electricity increases from 31% to 62% if a 60 kWp PV system is complemented by a 100 kWh battery storage. The complementary grid electricity mix strongly influences the environmental impacts of electricity consumed by the cloakroom and club building. The installation of a PV system and a battery storage leads to a 10% to 17% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared with the full coverage of the electricity demand by the average Swiss supply mix. The addition of a current battery system does not yield any further reduction compared with the "PV only" option. With the renewable electricity mix of the City of Zurich, the installation of a PV system and a battery storage leads to higher environmental impacts of the electricity consumed by the cloakroom and club building, irrespective of the type of battery used. A future increase in energy density, production optimisations, and second-life batteries bear a significant potential to reduce the environmental impacts of battery storage systems.