Evaluating economic feasibility and maximization of social welfare of photovoltaic projects developed for the Brazilian northeastern coast: An attribute agreement analysis

Abstract

Recently, renewable energy projects, such as photovoltaic systems, have become interesting generation alternatives thanks to the incentive strategies developed by several countries. For the user of photovoltaic microgeneration, there is interest in the financial return of the investment, which is most often financed by public banks with a limited budget. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze variables related both to the point of view of the investor in microgeneration and to the public banks that subsidize them. However, defining the configuration of photovoltaic systems that guarantees the economic feasibility for those who invest without excessively burdening the public resource is a complex task and requires the analysis of different experts. To fill this gap, this paper proposes an innovative approach for evaluating photovoltaic projects based on Attribute Agreement Analysis. Experts on photovoltaic systems with different profiles and experience were asked about 16 scenarios, planned according to a factorial design with four factors: installed power capacity, PV cell type, debt ratio, and loan interest rate. The results demonstrated that the proposed approach fulfills the objective of simultaneously assessing the impact of investments in photovoltaic systems, considering the investors' and public banks’ viewpoints. In the case analyzed, although the evaluations are performed in a judicious way (Wwithin> 0.85), there is a low agreement between the experts (Woverall < 0.70). In addition, an expert bias was observed regarding loan interest for economic feasibility (W = 0.61), as well as a controversial perception of the maximization of social welfare (W = 0.2361). The Net Present Value profile, determined by the installed power capacity of the system, was used with these results to discuss the current Brazilian renewable energy financing policy. The results supported that experts tend to overestimate the impact of the financing interest rate on financial returns.