Technical and Economic Optimal Solutions for Utility-Scale Solar Photovoltaic Parks

Miguel Silva,Mário Batalha,Rui Castro

doi:10.3390/electronics9030400

Abstract

Solar energy has shown to be a successful renewable source, wherefore large investments are planned in the upcoming decades. This work aims at developing technical and economical solutions to optimize a utility-scale grid connected solar photovoltaic park with an installed capacity of 24 MWp. Several successive simulations were automatically performed with the PVSyst software, so that each influencing parameter is individually analyzed. Moreover, a comprehensive study touching relevant aspects, such as central versus string inverters, landscape versus portrait dispositions, the optimal tilt angle (for fixed tilt systems), backtracking strategy (for single axis tracking systems), shading limit angle, and pitch is performed with the objective of finding the configuration leading to the higher grid injected energy output. The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) was obtained for 12 different cases in which, for both fixed tilt and single-axis tracking (SAT), central and string inverters and portrait/landscape disposition were considered. The lowest LCOE achieved was 32.23 €/MWh, which is a clear indication of the competitiveness of the solar Photovoltaic (PV) technology. The most economic viable solution is characterized by the employment of an SAT system with the backtracking strategy, together with string inverters and module portrait disposition.

Highlights

Energy is crucial for a wide range of applications in agriculture, transportation, industry, and household sectors, among others
In PV systems, there is no fuel cost, nor CO2 emissions; we have considered that Operation & Maintenance (O&M) costs may be accounted for as a percentage of the investment, so we assumed they do not depend on the production size
The main goal of this paper was to investigate the maximization of the energy output of a 24 MWp grid-connected solar PV park

Summary

Introduction

Energy is crucial for a wide range of applications in agriculture, transportation, industry, and household sectors, among others. The global warming and climate change have been identified as an unsettling phenomenon, which requires mankind to reverse this process as soon as possible. In this regard, the employment of renewable energies appears to be one of the foremost efficient solutions. The strong reduction of the investment costs along with the diverse components’ efficiency improvements will make the installed power to keep growing in the future, namely through the implementation of large-scale grid connected solar PV parks. The optimization of solar PV parks turned out to be a crucial topic to be studied, since it highly influences the energy output and the project’s economic viability in the long term. The solar PV park optimization is a not a straightforward problem due to the existence of many variables that need to be considered, which might result in parameters with controversial values

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion