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Economic evaluation of maintenance strategies for ground-mounted solar photovoltaic plants

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  • Peters, Lennart
  • Madlener, Reinhard

Abstract

We propose a generic model which allows to evaluate the economic viability of alternative maintenance strategies for differently sized photovoltaic plants with variable components. We thoroughly review the existing literature on reliability, maintenance and maintenance strategies for PV plants. The model is applied to fixed-tilt ground-mounted solar PV plants in Germany of three different sizes: 1, 10, and 100MWp. The PV plants are set up in a central inverter configuration with the following components: AC/DC switch, circuit breaker, and inverter. The analysis compares immediate corrective maintenance with maintenance strategies of different periodicity (weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly). Simulations take the driving time of the service team and the operation of a spare parts inventory into account. We further analyze the impact of hourly spot prices in contrast to constant prices (feed-in tariffs). We find that corrective maintenance is the most cost-efficient strategy. If the service journey takes six hours instead of one hour, corrective maintenance becomes more expensive than weekly periodic maintenance. For a three-hour journey, the size of the PV plant matters. If corrective maintenance is adopted, the establishing of a spare parts inventory should be considered. When volatile hourly spot prices are considered, we find that opportunity costs are lowest (highest) when service teams operate at 8pm (8 am), irrespective of the day of the week, whereas maintenance events scheduled for Wednesdays at 8 am or 2pm are, given current EPEX spot prices, the most cost-efficient in terms of total costs.

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  • Peters, Lennart & Madlener, Reinhard, 2017. "Economic evaluation of maintenance strategies for ground-mounted solar photovoltaic plants," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 264-280.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:199:y:2017:i:c:p:264-280
    DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.04.060
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    Cited by:

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    5. Carlos Toledo & Lucía Serrano-Lujan & Jose Abad & Antonio Lampitelli & Antonio Urbina, 2019. "Measurement of Thermal and Electrical Parameters in Photovoltaic Systems for Predictive and Cross-Correlated Monitorization," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-20, February.
    6. Clavijo-Blanco, J.A. & Álvarez-Tey, G. & Saborido-Barba, N. & Barberá-González, J.L. & García-López, C. & Jiménez-Castañeda, R., 2021. "Laboratory tests for the evaluation of the degradation of a photovoltaic plant of 2.85 MWp with different classes of PV modules," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 262-277.
    7. Khan, M. Ryyan & Sakr, Enas & Sun, Xingshu & Bermel, Peter & Alam, Muhammad A., 2019. "Ground sculpting to enhance energy yield of vertical bifacial solar farms," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 241(C), pages 592-598.
    8. Zhang, Minhui & Zhang, Qin & Zhou, Dequn & Wang, Lei, 2021. "Punishment or reward? Strategies of stakeholders in the quality of photovoltaic plants based on evolutionary game analysis in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    9. Rediske, Graciele & Michels, Leandro & Siluk, Julio Cezar Mairesse & Rigo, Paula Donaduzzi & Rosa, Carmen Brum & Lima, Andrei Cunha, 2024. "A proposed set of indicators for evaluating the performance of the operation and maintenance of photovoltaic plants," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 354(PA).
    10. Rômulo de Oliveira Azevêdo & Paulo Rotela Junior & Luiz Célio Souza Rocha & Gianfranco Chicco & Giancarlo Aquila & Rogério Santana Peruchi, 2020. "Identification and Analysis of Impact Factors on the Economic Feasibility of Photovoltaic Energy Investments," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-40, September.
    11. Liu, Lujie & Xiao, Yiyong & Yang, Jun, 2024. "Daily optimization of maintenance routing and scheduling in a large-scale photovoltaic power plant with time-varying output power," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 360(C).
    12. Susanto, Julius & Shahnia, Farhad & Ludwig, David, 2018. "A framework to technically evaluate integration of utility-scale photovoltaic plants to weak power distribution systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 231(C), pages 207-221.
    13. Joong-Woo Shin & Kwang-Hoon Yoon & Hui-Seok Chai & Jae-Chul Kim, 2022. "Reliability-Centered Maintenance Scheduling of Photovoltaic Components According to Failure Effects," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-15, March.
    14. Ramitha Dissanayake & Akila Wijethunge & Janaka Wijayakulasooriya & Janaka Ekanayake, 2022. "Optimizing PV-Hosting Capacity with the Integrated Employment of Dynamic Line Rating and Voltage Regulation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-19, November.
    15. Choi, Jongwoo & Lee, Il-Woo & Cha, Suk-Won, 2022. "Analysis of data errors in the solar photovoltaic monitoring system database: An overview of nationwide power plants in Korea," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    16. Höwer, Daniel & Oberst, Christian A. & Madlener, Reinhard, 2017. "Regionalization Heuristic to Map Spatial Heterogeneity of Macroeconomic Impacts: The Case of the Green Energy Transition in NRW," FCN Working Papers 13/2017, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN), revised 01 Feb 2019.
    17. Abdulla, Hind & Sleptchenko, Andrei & Nayfeh, Ammar, 2024. "Photovoltaic systems operation and maintenance: A review and future directions," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Photovoltaics; Ground-mounted solar PV; Corrective maintenance; Germany;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q40 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - General

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