Technical and economic prefeasibility analysis of residential solar PV system in South Kazakhstan

Abstract

In the family of the renewable technologies, photovoltaic (PV) systems today attract considerable attention (Dornfeldt, 2013). However, on-grid PV market is not a profitable sector by itself. It is dependent on the governmental support, which still must stimulate investment with subsidies. Thus, this paper presents the technical and economic prefeasibility analysis of implementing a residential photovoltaic system in South Kazakhstan, using the clean energy project analysis tool RETScreen® V.4. The different systems available for PV cells are considered, however, with the climatic conditions in South Kazakhstan, the study focuses on polycrystalline solar cells (Poly-Si) due to its optimal specifications for the region. Furthermore, local company Astana Solar has implemented a production line of Poly-Si photovoltaic modules using Kazakhstani silicon (Astana Solar, 2012), which could make the project even more attractive to the country. In the analysis presented, solar resource in South Kazakhstan was estimated using solar radiation data from NASA Surface Meteorology and Solar Energy. For a 6.6 kWp system, installed in the roof of a home, it is found that 8 834 MWh of electric energy is exported to the grid in average per year. The suitability of city-level Feed in Tariffs (FITs) to promote solar photovoltaic panels in Kazakhstan is included in the analysis, despite it is very recent and had not been thoroughly examined yet (Ministry of Energy of Kazakhstan, 2014). Several different economic and financial indicators were calculated, such as the Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Net Present Value (NPV), Benefit-Cost (B-C) ratio, Cost of Energy Production (CEP) and Simple Payback (SP). All indicators for all sites explored in South Kazakhstan showed favorable conditions for deployment of the proposed residential solar PV system. The highest IRR of 17.9%, NPV of $14523 and B-C ratio of 9.65 was observed in Shymkent and the lowest IRR of 16%, NPV of $11366 and B-C ratio of 7.84 was observed in Taraz. Meanwhile, it can be observed that Shymkent got the shortest SP period of 9.9 years and Taraz got the longest payback period of 10.8 years. The technical and economic analysis shows also that the implementation of an additional 50% subsidy on total initial cost recently approved, affected very positively the PV-based generation system in southern regions. Therefore, it is found that all southern Kazakhstan is a fertile territory to implement on-grid residential projects