IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/appene/v199y2017icp264-280.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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.

Suggested Citation

  • 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
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261917304579
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.04.060?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sinha, Y. & Steel, J.A., 2015. "A progressive study into offshore wind farm maintenance optimisation using risk based failure analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 735-742.
    2. Kerres,, Bertrand & Fischer, Katharina & Madlener, Reinhard, 2014. "Economic Evaluation of Maintenance Strategies for Wind Turbines: A Stochastic Analysis," FCN Working Papers 3/2014, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    3. Mérigaud, Alexis & Ringwood, John V., 2016. "Condition-based maintenance methods for marine renewable energy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 53-78.
    4. de Faria, Haroldo & Costa, João Gabriel Spir & Olivas, Jose Luis Mejia, 2015. "A review of monitoring methods for predictive maintenance of electric power transformers based on dissolved gas analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 201-209.
    5. Olivencia Polo, Fernando A. & Ferrero Bermejo, Jesús & Gómez Fernández, Juan F. & Crespo Márquez, Adolfo, 2015. "Failure mode prediction and energy forecasting of PV plants to assist dynamic maintenance tasks by ANN based models," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 227-238.
    6. Cai, Baoping & Liu, Yonghong & Ma, Yunpeng & Huang, Lei & Liu, Zengkai, 2015. "A framework for the reliability evaluation of grid-connected photovoltaic systems in the presence of intermittent faults," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 93(P2), pages 1308-1320.
    7. Zhang, Peng & Li, Wenyuan & Li, Sherwin & Wang, Yang & Xiao, Weidong, 2013. "Reliability assessment of photovoltaic power systems: Review of current status and future perspectives," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 822-833.
    8. Scarf, Philip A., 1997. "On the application of mathematical models in maintenance," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 493-506, June.
    9. Igba, Joel & Alemzadeh, Kazem & Durugbo, Christopher & Henningsen, Keld, 2015. "Performance assessment of wind turbine gearboxes using in-service data: Current approaches and future trends," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 144-159.
    10. Colli, Alessandra, 2015. "Failure mode and effect analysis for photovoltaic systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 804-809.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Frieling, Julius & Madlener, Reinhard, 2017. "Fueling the US Economy: Energy as a Production Factor from the Great Depression until Today," FCN Working Papers 2/2017, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    2. 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.
    3. 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).
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. 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).
    7. Chaminda Bandara, W.G. & Godaliyadda, G.M.R.I. & Ekanayake, M.P.B. & Ekanayake, J.B., 2020. "Coordinated photovoltaic re-phasing: A novel method to maximize renewable energy integration in low voltage networks by mitigating network unbalances," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 280(C).
    8. Hendrik Schmitz and Reinhard Madlener, 2020. "Direct and Indirect Energy Rebound Effects in German Households: A Linearized Almost Ideal Demand System Approach," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 5), pages 89-118.
    9. Qi, Ronghui & Li, Dujuan & Zhang, Li-Zhi, 2017. "Performance investigation on polymeric electrolyte membrane-based electrochemical air dehumidification system," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 1174-1183.
    10. 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.
    11. 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.
    12. 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).
    13. 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).
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. 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).
    17. 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.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. A. Sayed & M. El-Shimy & M. El-Metwally & M. Elshahed, 2019. "Reliability, Availability and Maintainability Analysis for Grid-Connected Solar Photovoltaic Systems," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-18, March.
    2. Sayed, A. & EL-Shimy, M. & El-Metwally, M. & Elshahed, M., 2020. "Impact of subsystems on the overall system availability for the large scale grid-connected photovoltaic systems," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    3. Chiacchio, Ferdinando & D’Urso, Diego & Famoso, Fabio & Brusca, Sebastian & Aizpurua, Jose Ignacio & Catterson, Victoria M., 2018. "On the use of dynamic reliability for an accurate modelling of renewable power plants," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 605-621.
    4. 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).
    5. Yang, Zhimin & Chai, Yi, 2016. "A survey of fault diagnosis for onshore grid-connected converter in wind energy conversion systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 345-359.
    6. Ferdinando Chiacchio & Fabio Famoso & Diego D’Urso & Sebastian Brusca & Jose Ignacio Aizpurua & Luca Cedola, 2018. "Dynamic Performance Evaluation of Photovoltaic Power Plant by Stochastic Hybrid Fault Tree Automaton Model," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-22, January.
    7. Stefan Baschel & Elena Koubli & Jyotirmoy Roy & Ralph Gottschalg, 2018. "Impact of Component Reliability on Large Scale Photovoltaic Systems’ Performance," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-16, June.
    8. Gallardo-Saavedra, Sara & Hernández-Callejo, Luis & Duque-Pérez, Oscar, 2019. "Quantitative failure rates and modes analysis in photovoltaic plants," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 825-836.
    9. Jose L. López-Prado & Jorge I. Vélez & Guisselle A. Garcia-Llinás, 2020. "Reliability Evaluation in Distribution Networks with Microgrids: Review and Classification of the Literature," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-31, November.
    10. Rajkumar Bhimgonda Patil & Basavraj S Kothavale & Laxman Yadu Waghmode, 2019. "Selection of time-to-failure model for computerized numerical control turning center based on the assessment of trends in maintenance data," Journal of Risk and Reliability, , vol. 233(2), pages 105-117, April.
    11. Kuschel, Torben & Bock, Stefan, 2016. "The weighted uncapacitated planned maintenance problem: Complexity and polyhedral properties," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 250(3), pages 773-781.
    12. Terracciano, Anthony Carmine & Vasu, Subith S. & Orlovskaya, Nina, 2016. "Design and development of a porous heterogeneous combustor for efficient heat production by combustion of liquid and gaseous fuels," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 228-236.
    13. Hung, Duong Quoc & Mithulananthan, N. & Bansal, R.C., 2014. "An optimal investment planning framework for multiple distributed generation units in industrial distribution systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 62-72.
    14. Marian Liberos & Raúl González-Medina & Gabriel Garcerá & Emilio Figueres, 2019. "A Method to Enhance the Global Efficiency of High-Power Photovoltaic Inverters Connected in Parallel," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-19, June.
    15. Wu, Shaomin & Scarf, Philip, 2015. "Decline and repair, and covariate effects," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 244(1), pages 219-226.
    16. Abdollahzadeh, Hadi & Atashgar, Karim & Abbasi, Morteza, 2016. "Multi-objective opportunistic maintenance optimization of a wind farm considering limited number of maintenance groups," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 247-261.
    17. Yue, Hui & Worrell, Ernst & Crijns-Graus, Wina, 2021. "Impacts of regional industrial electricity savings on the development of future coal capacity per electricity grid and related air pollution emissions – A case study for China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 282(PB).
    18. Guo R. & Ascher H. & Love E., 2001. "Towards Practical and Synthetical Modelling of Repairable Systems," Stochastics and Quality Control, De Gruyter, vol. 16(1), pages 147-182, January.
    19. Zhou, P. & Jin, R.Y. & Fan, L.W., 2016. "Reliability and economic evaluation of power system with renewables: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 537-547.
    20. Pramod R. Sonawane & Sheetal Bhandari & Rajkumar Bhimgonda Patil & Sameer Al-Dahidi, 2023. "Reliability and Criticality Analysis of a Large-Scale Solar Photovoltaic System Using Fault Tree Analysis Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-24, March.

    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

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:199:y:2017:i:c:p:264-280. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.