Techno-Economic analysis of proposed10 MWP Floating Solar PV plant at Nagarjuna Sagar, Telangana, India: Part-1

Abstract

The Floating Solar Photovoltaic (FSPV) plant is an emerging technology where the PV plant is installed on the water s surface. The FSPV plant technology has many advantages like increasing the energy yield from the PV panels due to the evaporative cooling effect of water, decreasing water evaporation rate, saving the land requirement, etc. As the photovoltaic source is highly intermittent, it is unable to meet the power demand. Because of this limitation, it is challenging to connect PV plants directly to the grid. Installing FSPV plants on the reservoir of a hydropower plant is one of the energy storage methods that can mitigate the FSPV plant s intermittency. Technical performance analysis for the proposed 10 MWP FSPV plant is carried out, and its results were compared with a Ground-mounted Solar PV (GSPV) plant of the same capacity. A MATLAB code has been developed to calculate the daily energy incident on the tilted PV module, the energy generated by the PV plant, Performance Ratio (PR), Capacity Utilization Factor (CUF), etc. Results show that the proposed FSPV plant annually generates 3.18% more electricity than a GSPV plant and has a better operating performance. The proposed FSPV plant also curtails 301390 tonnes of CO2 emission annually. This installation will be equivalent to planting 454838 teak trees over the lifetime of the plant.