FINANCIAL ANALYSIS OF PHOTOVOLTAIC POWER PLANTS USING RELIABILITY

Abstract

In the first part of this work, a methodology for estimating the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE), maintenance costs and availability for different plant topologies was presented. Due to the use of Reliability Block diagrams, LCOE estimate was improved by using a model that takes into consideration items such as: local labor costs, inventory costs and the effect of availability of subsystems on the total production of the PV plant. A reliability block diagram model was built for each configuration and simulation results were presented. In this second part, a financial analysis is made considering the expected operating life of the PV plant, PV module efficiency reduction throughout the years, capacity factor and costs (invested capital and operations and maintenance). Two main results are presented for each configuration: the maximum capital investment for breakeven in 25 years at a fixed interest rate; the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) in 25 years. Simulation results show that incentives are necessary for all configurations: the maximum capital investment for breakeven is 2.443, 2.319 and 2.192 million reais, which are less than the necessary capital, and IRR, 6.94%, 6.20% and 4.34% for ‘centralized’, ‘four-inverter’ and ‘string inverter’ topologies respectively. Rates below the actual cost of capital.