Abstract
Today, photovoltaic (PV) power generation accounts for a relatively small proportion of total power generation in China. If photovoltaic power can achieve grid parity, it can replace the original traditional thermal power generation, which has positive significance on the environment. The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is the main general economic indicator for the evaluation of power generation technology in the world. Based on the traditional LCOE evaluation model and considering the shortcomings of the previous LCOE evaluation models, the cost of photovoltaic power generation is refined in this paper. The cost of the taxation with calculating the depreciation, the loss, and the income of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) are taken into consideration. Hence, a more accurate and more comprehensive LCOE model is presented. Moreover, combined with other investment indicators, a photovoltaic power generation benefit model corresponding to the current development status is proposed. Taking a 3-MW distributed photovoltaic power station project in Nanjing as a case study, the sensitivity analysis of factors that affect the benefit of photovoltaic power generation is carried out to further explore the feasibility of photovoltaic power to grid parity.
Highlights
The ratio of photovoltaic power generation to gross power generation is lower than 2% (Figure 2) [3], which is due to the high cost of PV [4,5]
In the process of buck-boosting of centralized photovoltaic power stations, there is a certain loss of electrical energy [26], reflecting that it is necessary to consider the efficiency of the boosting grid and the efficiency of the buck grid
If levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of photovoltaic power generation is equal to traditional power generation technologies, people will actively choose to use solar power, a clean energy, which will be a huge leap in China’s energy conservation and emission reduction
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Solar companies in China make income by outputting power to grid with the feed-in tariffs (Fits) [6,7,8], a subsidy mechanism by which the government wants to encourage people to join the photovoltaic industry [9,10,11,12]. Through the macro policy orders to promote the development of the photovoltaic industry, some problems such as unreasonable resource allocation, low efficiency, inability to select, and huge deficit pressure to the government are still in suspense. Solar auction, another power generation price mechanism, will squeeze the profit of companies, accelerate research and lower power generation cost [6,7].
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