Techno-economic assessment of implementing a 6 MW grid-connected photovoltaic system in different climate zones in Canada – A case study towards a sustainable community.

Hebatallah Teamah

Abstract


The current study models the implementation of a 6 MW grid connected photovoltaic (PV) system in five Canadian locations. The locations cover the most populous cities in five Canadian provinces. Solar map has been inspected to ensure different irradiation levels in the considered locations. Canadian solar market is still underdeveloped in renewable integration unlike other European countries. Scarce research has provided comparison of potential photovoltaic integration in different Canadian climate zones. RETScreen has been used to model the system under realistic conditions. The weather conditions were imported from the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) website. RETScreen has been used as it provides comprehensive five stage analysis of renewable projects economic feasibility.  It was shown that Regina has the highest average annual solar irradiation of 4 kWh/m2/day. The PV project has a simple payback of 11.2 years. It can offer 55.2 tCO2 reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The PV system installed in the rest of locations have shown reasonable financial feasibility as well. The lowest potential was found in Western coast cities like Victoria. The payback in such location is two years more and its greenhouse gas mitigation potential is 6% less than Regina. This ensures a promising future for solar PV system incorporation in the Northern climate unlike the common misconception. However, care needs to be taken with different project economic parameters. Increases in initial cost, operation and maintenance cost, and debt interest rate adversely impact the project financial viability.


Keywords


Solar, photovoltaic, payback, project feasibility, risk analysis.

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DOI (PDF): https://doi.org/10.20508/ijrer.v11i4.12583.g8306

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