Abstract
Solar energy has become one of the most important sources of energy all around the world. Only in the European Union, between 2010 and 2019, solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation capacity increased from 1.9 to over 133 GW. Throughout this work, an economic analysis of the production of photovoltaic solar energy utility scale facilities is performed, previously defining some theoretical concepts relating to electricity generation by means of photovoltaic modules, as well as commenting on studies that have inspired the project. In order to carry out this economic analysis, the locations of twenty capital cities within European Union countries are selected, in order to estimate their yearly solar PV energy produced under specific conditions. The Levelized Costs of Energy (LCOE) is calculated with the goal of comparing the profitability of each photovoltaic tracking technology: fixed, one-axis tracking systems (vertical or inclined) and two-axis tracking systems; including LCOE maps country-wise for each technology. A sensitivity analysis is also presented, in order to evaluate the significance and impact of the main variables involved in the analysis. The results show that one-axis tracking systems are the best option in all countries, reducing LCOE by more than 20% when compared to two-axis tracking system. The impact of wages is also significant. In higher latitudes, in most cases, wages also increase, hence the LCOE is higher and consequently less interesting for a potential investor.
Highlights
This concept is defined by the European Commission Joint Research Centre as: “the power that the manufacturer declares that the PV array can produce under standard test conditions, which are a constant 1000 W
Regarding the efficiency of the system, a constant value of system loss of 14% has been selected for the present research, since this is the default value proposed by the Photovoltaic Geographical Information System (PVGIS) tool
It is taken into consideration the hypothesis of same installation conditions and materials for every country; this parameter remains constant for all cases
Summary
As a matter of fact, more new capacity was installed for solar than any other power generation technology in the EU in 2019 [1] This commitment is illustrated with the approval by the European Commission of a legislative package called “Clean Energy for all Europeans”, completed in 2019. The focus of this program is threefold; (1) to improve energy efficiency, (2) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and (3) to develop an electricity market system where the consumer plays a major role, allowing him to act as an active agent of the market [2,3,4]
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