Design and Techno-economic Simulation of a Standalone PV Solar Power Plant for a Typical Housing Estate in Owerri, Nigeria

Abstract

Most, if not all, of the estates in Owerri, Nigeria are planned without recourse to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) envisions 2030’s goals 7 and 11. SDG goal 7 (on affordable and clean energy) and goal 11 (on sustainable cities and communities) envision a world by 2030 where there will be universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services; a substantial increase in the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix, etc. This research was done to depict the feasibility of a photovoltaic (PV) power plant for estates in Owerri, Nigeria. A standalone PV solar power plant for a typical 200 bungalow housing estate in Owerri, Nigeria was designed and simulated to study its techno-economic feasibility using PVsyst 7.3 simulation software. The study revealed that with a global horizontal irradiation of 4.70 kWh/m2/day reaching Owerri, Nigeria, a 468 kWp PV system is required to supply the electricity needs of an estate with an energy demand of 1,480 kWh/day. The system will generate a total of 615,168 kWh of electric energy in a year with a performance ratio of 70.4 % and a solar fraction of 96.8%. The designed PV solar power plant is highly feasible as the obtained results from the economic simulation showed that the system’s installation cost is 466,970 USD at a specific cost of 1.0 USD/kWp, and the net present value (NPV) is positive at 842,699.16 USD, 752,219.11 USD, and 698,107.07 USD, respectively for the 0%, 50%, and 80% loan financing cases. With an energy tariff of 0.15 USD/kWh, the return on investment, payback period, and levelized cost of energy were determined as 180.5%, 7.2 years, and 0.0698 USD/kWh, respectively for the 0% loan financing case.