Evaluation and Simulation of Performance, Environmental and Economic Aspects of 1MW Photovoltaic Powerplant and Comparison with an Operational Powerplant

In the current study, an operational method for feasibility study of aphotovoltaic powerplant connected to the grid with total capacity of 1MWprovide. This method first uses the geographical conditions of thepowerplant’s location to determine the arrangement for photovoltaicarrays with the conditions of minimized space use and suitable distancebetween photovoltaic strings to facilitate maintenance and repair andpreventing modules from casting shadows on each other. The innovationof the current article is using the empirical data to compare the simulatedpowerplant and an actual powerplant from economic, performance andenvironmental pollutant aspects. The error analysis between the actualpowerplant and simulated model is used to determine the accuracy of thesimulation results. Furthermore, the amount of CO2 emission reductiondue to the construction of this powerplant is investigated. The resultsindicated the importance of the geographical location and indicated whichlocations in Iran provide the highest efficiency for construction ofphotovoltaic powerplants. Furthermore, the other innovation is todetermine the number of residential apartment units whose electricity wasprovided by this powerplant.