Techno-economic and sensitivity analysis of floating photovoltaics for river island communities in Bangladesh

Abstract

Amongst the communities at highest risk due from climate change in Bangladesh are the agricultural and fishing communities of the river island chars, which have poor access to clean, affordable and reliable energy. In this work, we undertake a workshop with char communities to understand annual variance in energy usage resulting from diverse livelihoods and, in doing so, explore hybrid renewable energy systems to meet such demands, exploring options in floating solar and wind energy based on HOMER model. PVsyst is utilized to model the detailed floating and land-based PV system, separately. The two most notable differences between floating and land-based PV are the aging rate and albedo, which produce a 5.97 % and 5.15 % difference in energy generation, respectively. Thermal loss factor, mismatch loss, aging loss, floating capex cost, and soiling loss were modelled to explore the performance of floating photovoltaics leading to a 27 % reduction in levelized cost of electricity.