Fostering Rooftop Solar PV Investments Toward Smart Cities through e-SMART PV

Abstract

Smart cities offer an opportunity to households to use low-carbon electricity from rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV). The capacity of rooftop solar PV has been growing rapidly in a developed country, especially Australia that has a capacity of 8 GWp in 2018. Developing countries also have a similar aim. For an instance, Indonesia has encouraged the use of rooftop PV through the regulation of the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Number 49 of 2018 concerning the use of rooftop PV systems by consumers of the State-owned Electricity Company. To boost rooftop solar PV investments, Indonesia needs to adopt successful programs in developed countries, such as an application that can provide information on the benefits and costs of rooftop solar PV shortly and comprehensively. Our study aims to create an application, called the electronic survey, monitoring, and reporting of PV (e-SMART PV), application. Compared to other similar applications, e-SMART PV is able to inform the investment costs and potential for electricity production by considering the regulations in Indonesia that are different from developed countries. Moreover, e-SMART also has better economic analysis compared to existing similar applications.