Incentive-Based Assessment of Residential Solar PV Systems: A Case Study

Small-scale rooftop solar PV is a globally emerging market, but not yet popular in Saudi Arabia. However, it is an essential part of Saudi Arabia's 2030 vision which aims to achieve 50% renewable penetration. The public is not confident of the financial gains of rooftop solar PV, so this raises the need for a detailed feasibility study that considers local metrological data, prices, and regulations. In this paper, different designs of grid-connected solar PV are studied, starting by evaluating the average electricity consumption of 3 houses and the utilization of the standard load profile (SLP) concept to achieve reasonable hourly data. Then, local metrological data and system components pricings are collected. After that, HOMER is used to simulate and analyze system performance, and determining the feasibility of the system using two variables as references, which are levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and payback period. Finally, these results are used to propose possible incentives adjustment in the form of feed-in-tariff (FIT) and tax-deduction to make rooftop PV systems more attractive. The study showed that a grid-connected PV system could provide a 28% reduction in LCOE compared to grid tariff with a payback period of 14 years. Eventually, the study successfully proved the feasibility of a grid-connected rooftop PV system, but with a long payback period, so additional incentives are proposed to overcome this issue.