Economic evaluation of rooftop grid-connected photovoltaic systems for residential building in Egypt

Egypt is a country with high solar energy potential and the exploitation of such promising energy resource is critical for national sustainable development through efficient energy planning with gradual independence from fossil fuels. Successive incentive polices had been introduced by the Egyptian electricity authority to encourage the deployment of small-scale residential rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems. This article studies the techno-economic feasibility of grid-connected rooftop PV system in Egypt under the currently applied retail electricity price and the net energy metering policy. The study investigates three types of residential households with different electricity demand levels; low, medium, and high consumptions. The economic evaluation of various sizes of the PV system is carried out based on different economic measures such as net present value, cost of energy, payback period, and electricity bill saving. Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources software has been utilized to carry out such economic evaluation. The results identify that the viability of PV installation in residential applications is clearly affected by the energy consumption pattern, the parameters of the incentive policy applied, and the economical indices of the system.