Cost parity assessment of a solar PV generator for a commercial bank in Makurdi

Electricity in some developing countries supply is epileptic and has over the years posed as a major challenge to the economic and industrial development. In Nigeria, for example, only about 40% of the population have access to electricity from the national grid. There is therefore need to develop clean alternative sources of energy like solar Photovoltaic (PV) that will improve access to electricity. This paper presents an energy audit and PV sizing for a typical commercial bank in Nigeria that will be supplied electricity by a standalone PV generator. The energy audit provided a saving of about 33% that reduced the numbers of both batteries and solar panels which are the major cost components of the installation. RETScreen was used to size the power installation and it returned the total surface area required for the installation to be 438.5 m², an array of 456 solar modules rated at 120 watts and 194 battery bank each having ampere-hour rating of 400AH. The return on investment based on the cost of running generator for business by the bank in addition to the monthly payment to the power utility company is 4 years, 9 months while the grid parity is estimated at 19.86 years.