Rooftop PV Energy Potential Based on Housing Design in Brunei National Housing Planning †

Abstract

Brunei aims to achieve 600 (Formula presented.) of renewable energy by 2035. Since the country has high solar radiance throughout the year, solar energy is the most feasible. However, the high cost of producing solar farms remains an obstacle and caused the country’s progress towards the goal to fall behind schedule. Thus, this study aims to show the beneficial costs of investing in residential rooftop solar farms instead. This study calculated the optimal PV system sizes based on the residential load profiles (at only 10% of total consumption) and the available detached housing plans. After that, the costs of the optimal PV system sizes are estimated and then projected to the number of detached houses nationwide, which is 49,872 houses. The research found that the optimal rooftop off-grid PV system size for the average resident is 15.3 (Formula presented.), with an inverter of 12.0 (Formula presented.) and a nominal battery size of 20 (Formula presented.). The net present cost of one optimal PV system is BND49,108 for 20 years of lifetime. If all the detached houses in the country are utilized to install solar panels, the total solar capacity is 763 (Formula presented.), costing BND2.4 billion without involving the homeowners’ funds. Comparing this budget to conventional solar farms such as Tenaga Suria Brunei, the country can save BND10.3 billion. The study shows that Brunei may need to consider the benefits of investing more in residential rooftop solar farms due to savings in potential costs and only using the readily available rooftop space.