The photovoltaic production of electricity in the European Union: an economic approach

Abstract

In the present context, the needs of explore new sources of energy arise, and also improve the performance of colleting the energy from known sources. It is an undeniable fact solar energy has become one of the most important forms of energy all around the world, easy to capture and converted into electricity only with the help of a photovoltaic cell. Throughout this work we will perform an economic analysis of the production of photovoltaic solar energy, defining previously some theoretical concepts related with electricity generation by means of photovoltaic cells, as well as commenting studies which have inspired the project, studies about the comparison between photovoltaic technologies. In order to carry out this economic analysis we will select twenty locations in European Union countries and will calculate the yearly produced energy with the informatic tool PVGIS, describing before the key concepts of its manual and the economic formulas to the mentioned analysis. The Levelized Costs of Energy (LCOE) will be calculated to compare the profitability of each photovoltaic technology: fixed, one-axis tracking systems (vertical or inclined) and two-axis tracking systems; appart from elaborating five maps of the European Union with the costs of energy production in each country, one for each technology and also an optimal map. Finally, a sensitivity analysis will be performed, in order to observe how, varying the wage of the country (and consequently investment and operation costs) or the yearly energy production, varies the costs of energy production.