Techno-Economic Analysis of Floating Solar PV Integrating with Hydropower Plant in Bangladesh

Abstract

Solar Photovoltaic (PV) plant installations are expanding noticeably throughout the world at an aim to generate electricity from clean and renewable sources. However, large scale PV plants are not sustainable as they are creating enormous burden of intense land requirements particularly for the country have higher population density. To preserve the valuable land, installing PV plant on water bodies like lakes, dams, reservoir, river, canals and ponds can be an attractive alternative for harnessing solar energy and is typically known as Floating Solar PV (FSPV). FSPV not only utilize the duty-free water surface, but it has enormous advantages compared to terrestrial land based PV plants including high energy efficiency due to cooling effect from water evaporation, less obstacles to block sunshine, prevents water evaporation, land and water conservation, limits algae growth by blocking penetration of sunlight. Moreover integration of floating solar PV plant with hydropower plant by installing at dam reservoir for the utilization of optimum energy combination is an excellent opportunity that could reduce the additional transmission and distribution cost. In this paper, technical feasibility and economic viability of a 50 MW p FSPV plant integrated with hydroelectric dam in Bangladesh has analyzed. The levelized tariff of electricity at USD 0.056/kWh and around 9 years of payback period confirm the feasibility of the projected plant which able to produce more power than conventional PV plant. Furthermore, the plant could reduce 52.8 million tonnes of CO 2 emission by crafting environmentally sustainable.