Potential assessment of solar power plant: A case study of a small island in Eastern Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia as a tropical country has high solar energy potential to generate power. Solar power plant (SPP) using Photovoltaic (PV) is suitable for power generation in a small power system, such as in several small islands in Eastern Indonesia since solar energy is easy to obtain there. The implementation of SPP for power generation needs an examination of energy yield to observe the performance ratio of SPP. Those parameters are important to study to further analyze the economic potential and feasibility of SPP development. This study estimates the performance ratio (PR) and potential energy yield of SPP in a small island in Eastern Indonesia through a self-developed program using MATLAB based Graphical User Interface (GUI). Moreover, this program also provides the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) calculation and land use optimization by readjusting the PV array configuration. According to the simulation result, the implementation of SPP in Eastern Indonesia has 85.4% and 23.54% for annual PR and capacity factor (CF) respectively. The simulation also shows that the optimum distance between PV strings produces higher annual energy yield and CF.