Khatkar Kalan SPV Electricity Generating System: A Case Study

Solar photovoltaic systems are prohibitively expensive in terms of installation costs. Power from them is intermittent and available if solar radiations are available. On the other hand, PV electricity systems are free from ever-rising costs of conventional fuel. They also incur very less operation and maintenance costs. Using solar-PV power, it looks uneconomical in the short term, but may be profitable in the long term. It is therefore, interesting to identify the factors that can make investment in solar PV power generation is to be acceptable. In this paper life cycle analysis for 200 kWp solar photovoltaic electricity generation system has been carried out. It identifies the factors that can make the investment in a solar PV plant more favourable than investment in other conventional electricity generation sources. The energy payback time and the normalized greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been evaluated and found to be 4.73 years and 143.86g-CO2eq/kWhe respectively.