Comprehensive energy, economic, and environmental (3E) analyses for rooftop photovoltaic integration in urban regions employing utilization factor

With increasing prices of grid electricity, the necessity for sustainable and cheaper PV electricity generation also increases. The aim of this research is to examine the overall energy, economic and environmental benefits of urban scale rooftop PV applications. The investigation focuses on PV utilizability with a total study area of 246 km2. The PV energy potential is computed as 5,335.6 GWh/year for villas and 2,316.2 GWh/year for apartments with average utilization factors (UFs) of 30 % and 21 %, respectively. By comparing the UFs with studies of different countries, it is concluded that the findings of this study can be applied to buildings in other regions with comparable conditions and structural characteristics. It is extracted that PV application on villas and apartments can offset 87 % and 15 % of total grid load, respectively. It is found that the cooling load can be reduced to 4.5 % with average UF. Economic viability is also assessed at an interest rate of 22 % using factors like life cycle cost (LCC), levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), payback period (PP) and benefits to cost ratio (B/C). The LCC, LCOE, PP and B/C for city scale PV application are determined as USD 4.24 billion, USD 0.0221/kWh, 8.1 years and 1.2, respectively. It is also found that city-scale PV application can save 90.48 million tons of CO2, 2,678.2 tons of CH4, 382.6 tons of N20, 1.38 million tons of SO2 and 0.84 tons of NO during the useful life of project.