Relationships between the Number and Power of Hungarian Household-Sized Photovoltaic Power Plants and Selected Indicators of the Settlements: A Case Study

Martina Makai,András Vincze,Gábor Pintér,Nóra Hegedűsné Baranyai,Nóra Rodek,Henrik Zsiborács

doi:10.3390/pr9010004

Abstract

In the global transformation of energy systems, solar energy plays a prominent role, since the energy from our star is a limitless and clean resource, which is available practically almost everywhere. In spite of the immense advancements of photovoltaic systems, which utilize this source of energy, no in-depth research has been carried out regarding the present Hungarian status of the small-scale photovoltaic power plants, the most common type of solar power plant in Hungary. The novelty of this study is that it examines the number and power of these small-scale power plants at the settlement level within the service areas of the various distribution companies, by also considering the economic and infrastructural dimensions of the settlements. The paper seeks answers to the questions whether there are any significant relationships between the number and the power of power plants of this type and the indicators of the settlements, and if so, how strong they are. Besides pairwise correlations, the study also involved the analysis of the relationship between the ranking of the settlements based on the settlements’ complex indicators that were created from the settlements’ indicators and the ranking of the settlements according to the number and power of household-sized photovoltaic power plants per 1000 people. In the course of exploring the relationships, a regression model was also devised concerning the number of household-sized photovoltaic power plants and the settlement indicators.

Highlights

The investigations first focused on the settlements that had HMKEs and where electricity was supplied by ELMU -ÉMÁSZ, E.on Hungária Zrt. (EON), or NKM
Apart from the identification of the individual effects of the settlement indicators from the database containing the regions of all three electric companies and the demonstration of the relationships between the settlements’ ranking according to these and the ranking of the settlements based on the quantity of HMKEs, it was a main objective of this research to create a regression model that shows the relationship between the settlement indicators (Table 1) and the quantity of total HMKEs per 1000 population at a national level
The partial correlation coefficients showed that, in most of the cases the controlled variables had some effect on the strength of the relationship, this effect did not significantly modify the correlation

Summary

Introduction

Boosting renewable energy production is seen by many countries as a viable way of mitigating climate change and transforming the energy systems [1]. This point can be proven by the fact that by the end of 2017, more than 150 nations had set goals for developing the utilization of renewable energy [2]. As for the newly installed global power capacities, investments in renewable energies will comprise more than 60% of these by 2040 [3,4] All these developments are conducive to the truly important objective of the international community to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2 ◦C compared to preindustrial figures. This seems to be attainable if mankind aims for a rise of no more than 1.5 ◦C [5]

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Conclusion