A framework for evaluating urban solar adoption considering economic and environmental priorities of project owners

Abstract

In recent years, the utilization of photovoltaic (PV) solar systems in built-up regions have received more attention due to global warming issues and the need to mitigate the dependence on fossil fuels in buildings. In this context, it becomes critical to comprehend the economic and environmental implications of roof-installed PV systems for project owners looking to expand their usage. Thus, there is a need to develop a framework for optimizing rooftop solar PV systems in urban regions considering the economic and environmental aspects with regard to the PV project owners’ priorities, in addition to the energy-saving context, which was addressed in previous studies. Therefore, this study develops a search space optimization method to find the optimum layout of PV modules on roofs of buildings in urban regions, considering solar PV project owners' economic and environmental priorities. Payback time (PBT) and CO2 emission savings are considered for the economic and environmental criteria calculations, respectively. The results show the significance of owners’ economic and environmental priorities toward PV module arrangement on roofs. Instead of having an entire economic priority, having a 25 % environmental priority enhances annual PV system output and CO2 emission savings about 1.5 times with almost the same PBT.