Abstract:
Water bodies like small lakes, canals, and rivers in urban areas serve to be a way forward
to deploy photovoltaic technology with no constraints to involve land procurement. This
research aims to estimate the potential deployment of a floating photovoltaic system on
an urban lake site to assess its scope and compare it with a similar specification on-ground
photovoltaic system. System Advisor Model (SAM) has been used for techno-economic
analysis of a site in Pakistan. The technical analysis involves observing the effect of real
time temperature drop and calculation of water reduction efficiency for FPV systems. The
economic parameters like net present value (NPV) and payback period are used to judge
the economic feasibility of the floating photovoltaic deployment project. The floating
photovoltaic deployment in an urban area is subject to soiling as the water reservoir being
used exists in an area close to or within the city boundaries. The required cleaning water
costs a one-time extraction rate of $1435, while for a floating photovoltaic system, the
extraction cost is estimated to be $1.35. Under standard temperature conditions (STC)
one-year capacity factor turns out to be 0.70% more, producing an additional energy yield
of 64 kWh/kW for lake scenarios when a 10 °C temperature drop is considered. The total
power potential for the entire NUST Lake turns out to be 4.47 MW. A 1 MW FPV system
in NUST lake would result in a water reduction efficiency of 11.6%/year. Under standard
temperature conditions, the net present value for the on-ground system becomes negative
while it remains optimistic for the floating photovoltaic system as no land costs are
required. Similarly, once the land cost is included in the feasibility analysis, the payback
period for the on-ground system goes beyond 15 years which is only 5.37 years for a
floating photovoltaic system signifying the economic feasibility of the floating
photovoltaic project.
