Assessing the geospatial nature of location-dependent costs in installation of solar photovoltaic plants

Abstract

A major hurdle in increasing the economic feasibility of solar photovoltaic (SPV) plants is the ever-increasing share of location-dependent costs (land, transmission, labor, etc.) in total installation costs. Such costs are geospatial in nature, due to spatial socio-economics affecting them. Present geolocation methods, for locating SPV installation sites, do not consider the effect of location-dependent costs in installation. We use a spatial parameterization model for examining the factors causing spatial variation of the installation costs of land, labor, transmission and supply chains for suburban SPV plants, within a geographic boundary. The model is applied to Kolkata city, India, and the spatial variation of the costs are checked in a 2500 km2 suburban boundary. The spatial variation of the location-dependent costs is mainly caused by the distance from an economic focal point of the city. The variations significantly optimize at minima points in the 2500 km2 boundary, where the location-dependent costs increase by 10% with an average 2.6 km deviation and an average 6.7 km deviation from the global minima, for small and large plants, respectively. The spatial minima is mainly caused by variance of land and transmission costs. This minima location lies on the extrapolation of a line that connects the city focal point with the substation. The capacity of the SPV plants at the optima increases with increasing transmission voltage (11 kV to 66 kV), ranging from 4 MW to 257 MW in the case-study (small to large scale), while the minima shift away from the city focal point (ranging 29 km to 48 km) with increasing capacity. This study provides a perspective on how the spatial variation of installation costs can play a role in the geolocation of SPV plants. Furthermore, the empirical and spatial variation of location-dependent costs can enable energy planners to evaluate the economic feasibility of solar power and promote better land-use near cities.