Abstract
Grid-connected low voltage photovoltaic power plants cover most of the power capacity installed in Italy. They offer an important contribution to the power demand of the utilities connected but, due to the nature of the solar resource, the night-time consumption can be satisfied only withdrawing the energy by the national grid, at the price of the energy distributor. Thanks to the improvement of storage technologies, the installation of a system of battery looks like a promising solution by giving the possibility to increase auto-consumption dramatically. In this paper, a model-based approach to analyze and discuss the performance and the economic feasibility of grid-connected domestic photovoltaic power plants with a storage system is presented. Using as input to the model the historical series (2008–2017) of the main ambient variables, the proposed model, based on Stochastic Hybrid Fault Tree Automaton, allowed us to simulate and compare two alternative technical solutions characterized by different environmental conditions, in the north and in the south of Italy. The performances of these systems were compared and an economic analysis, addressing the convenience of the storage systems was carried out, considering the characteristic useful-life time, 20 years, of a photovoltaic power plant. To this end the Net Present Value and the payback time were evaluated, considering the main characteristics of the Italian market scenario.
Highlights
In the last decades, the photovoltaic industry has grown world-wide
In [6], Cucchiella et al proposed an economic analysis that considers residential households with different consumptions and levels of insolation in order to evaluate several well-known indicators such as Net Present Value (NPV), Discounted Payback Time (DPBT), and Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE), and pointed out that the success of the PV sector is linked to subsidies
The physical process is not limited to the previous was not good, its contribution was nullified in the “Interpreted MATLAB Fcn” that blockmodule but, since the Simulink model is not the main object of this paper, the rest of the blocks are implemented the physical equations shown in Equations (1)–(4)
Summary
The photovoltaic industry has grown world-wide. Nowadays, small and decentralized photovoltaic (PV) power plants play a key role in the sustainable development of distributed generation and will become one of the main pillars of the smart-grid and smart-city revolution [1]. In [6], Cucchiella et al proposed an economic analysis that considers residential households with different consumptions and levels of insolation in order to evaluate several well-known indicators such as NPV, Discounted Payback Time (DPBT), and Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE), and pointed out that the success of the PV sector is linked to subsidies According to these studies, it appears evident that the diffusion of grid-connected PV systems has provided great benefits in terms of social and environmental impact but has represented a valuable economic investment for the community [7].
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