Upcoming Events

In this talk, I will address the commercial feasibility assessment of PV systems both from economic and technical perspectives, including a study regarding the grid parity feasibility assessment and a study regarding the PV installation planning optimization. The price of PV has been steadily decreasing over the last decade, and many reports suggest that PV has not only achieved grid parity, but has even become considerably cheaper than conventional electricity sources. However, does the cost of electricity from PV power generation really compete with that of conventional energy power generation and achieve grid parity in the current electricity market? Aiming to measure this question, our first study [1] critically re-evaluates PV grid parity from a system levelized costs of electricity (system LCOE) perspective. In the literature, electricity costs are ubiquitously compared using LCOE. However, these traditional LCOE analyses neglect important cost factors that are specific to PV, leading to over optimistic scenarios. By fully considering the costs, we offer a new assessment framework and prediction modelling for assessing grid parity of PV installation. In addition, increasing photovoltaic (PV) installed capacity is considered a primary way to achieve carbon neutrality targets, which is an important target for navigating away from climate change. However, there is currently a lack of empirical work with regard to how to determine PV installation planning with the potential for achieving carbon neutrality. In some countries, the rapid development of PV systems has led to that the PV supply is beyond locally reasonable PV electricity demand. With more demands of PV installed capacity in the future decades, a reasonable PV installation plan becomes vital. Aiming to specify how PV systems installation should be placed steer towards carbon neutrality, our second study proposes a multi-objective optimization (MOO) model integrating the match between PV supply and local demand, to both meet the increasing PV installed capacity demand and alleviate the supply-demand mismatch.

References

[1]       Wang R, Hasanefendic S, Von Hauff E, Bossink B. The cost of photovoltaics: Re-evaluating grid parity for PV systems in China. Renew Energy 2022;194:469–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2022.05.101.