Investment and Maintenance Costs

INVESTMENT COSTS

The investement range for PV power plants constructed in 2010 was between 2,000 and 4,000 € more only for some tracking power plants constructed in the first halfth of the past year. Typical investment costs in years 2009/2010 are presented in the table below. Please note that typical investment range is presented in the tables. Typical investment costs are from 3,500€ /kWp for thin film PV power plants up to 5,500 €/kWp for c-Si tracking power plants for 2009. For 2010 investment required for 1 kWp was in a range from 2,000 to 4,000 €/kWp.

TABLE 1: Typical investment costs in year 2009 for different power ranges

TABLE 2: Typical investment costs in year 2010 for utilizy scale PV power plants

MAINTENANCE COSTS

Operation and maintenance costs, ranging between 0,02 to 0,1 €/kWh. However, these costs can vary significantly, ranging between as low as 0.01 €/kWh to 0.10 €/kWh. The higher reported costs included maintenance costs for generators in remote hybrid PV systems, as well as capital replacement costs due to environmental factors such as extreme temperatures and vandalism. The most significant replacement cost will likely be the battery. Some studies report that operation and maintenance costs are well correlated to the system size, so 1 % of total hardware costs (investment) operation and maintenance costs is expected. Aboves estimation are not very new but they match very well with latest results where average operation and maintanance costs are estimated to be about 50 US$/kW.

TABLE 3: Estimated total operating costs USD/MW [3] for different technologies (courtesy: EPRI)

Notes

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Reports

	The Drivers of the Levelized Cost of Electricity for Utility-Scale Photovoltaics; SunPower Corp., 14 August 2008.
	IEA: Guidlines for the Economic Analysis of renewable Energy Technology Applications; based on the findings of IEA Workshop on the Economics of Renewable Technologies; Chateau Montebello, Quebec, Canada, 1991.
	Short W. et al.: A Manual for the Economic Evaluation of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Technologies; National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, A national laboratory of the U.S.Department of Energy managed by Midwest Research Institute for the U.S. Department of Energy, contract No. DE-AC36-83CH10093.
	Wiser, R. et al.: Tracking the Sun, The Installed Costs of Photovoltaics in the U.S. from 1998 to 2007; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, February 2009.
	Wenzl, B., Nitsch, J.: Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien im Strombereich; EEG-Vergütungen, -Differenzkosten und -Umlage sowie ausgewählte Nutzeneffekte bis zum Jahr 2030; Teltow, Stuttgart, December 2008.
	Electric Power research Institute: Addressing Solar Photovoltaic Operations and Maintenance Challenges A Survey of Current Knowledge and Practices, EPRI, July 2010.
	Watt, M.: Added Values of Photovoltaic Power Systems; IEA PVPS Task 1, Report IEA PVPS TI-09, 1997.
	Nowak, S., Rezzonico, S.: Buy-Back Rates for Grid-connected Photovoltaic Power Systems; IEA PVPS Task 1, Report IEA PVPS TI 1997 2, November 1997.
	Photovoltaic Deployment in Developing Countries: Financing Mechanisms for Solar Home Systems in Developing Countries; Report IEA PVPS T9-01:2002.

Papers

Hansen, T. et al.: Photovoltaic Power Plant Experience at Tucson Electric power; ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress, November 2005, Orlando, FL.