Technical and financial analysis of unlicensed ground mounted pv plants investments in several provinces of Turkey

Energy is seen as one of the most important inputs to economic development and is one of the most important milestone of countries' independence. After near past of oil crisis, the energy indepence come more important for all countries. All the countries started to find out new ideas to be more indepent about energy. At this point, due to the difficulty of accessing conventional energy sources, the reduction of resources and the constantly changing input costs has increased the interest to renewable energies in recent years. In order to increase energy independence all over the world, renewable energy sources increase their place from day to day and cause incentive mechanisms to increase renewable resource utilization. As it is focused in the study, solar energy is one of the main sources of renewable energy. Because of sun is endless source, solar energy has no limitation via borders of the countries. In countries like Turkey with high external dependency and inadequate conventional resources, usage of renewable sources and energy efficiency are important.In Turkey first renewable energy law introduced in 2005 as Use of Renewable Energy sources for the purpose of Electricity Generation. However, investments in renewable energy sources remained limited until 2010 due to lack of secondary legislations and low feed in tariff compared to investment costs. Together with the amendment of renewable energy law as higher feed in tariff and decreased cost of invesments, Turkey started to get more invesment than previous years for renewable energy sources. As it is known, Turkey is above the world average as wind and solar potential and it is still not started to use a large part of this potential. In this context, Turkey has made extreme progress in the last 10 years period and has brought important incentives mechanism specially for renewable energy. Turkey also has renewable energy setup targets for 100th year of the republic of turkey as national strategy. In the last 5 years number of solar and wind project increased extremely. Rapidly falling installation costs have brought these incentives to the forefront and led many investors to focus on this area. This issue has increased investments in this area as investments are profitable rather than environmental awareness. Turkey should be able to continue this developments socially after the end of the incentive period, the public and legal entities should be told about the important points of generating energy from renewable sources and the establishment of production power plants without incentives should be supported. In addition to this, the reduction of the bureaucracy by the state will make an important contribution to the increase of the numbers of the power plants. In the study, potential of solar energy as one of the renewable energy sources has been studied in various parts of the country. The study has 2 different steps. Firstly, the data validity of the PVSyst program is checked and inside of this part 3 projects are selected which are already in operation for 3 months. The real data got from the plant owners via their remote control system. General infos are collected about panel and inverter's brand, tilt on the structure, number of panel and inverter which are used actual solar power plants. Then together with all collected infos simulations are prepared in PVSyst and production calculation were made according to P50, P75 and P90 uncertainties together with all the losses(temperature losses, cable losses, general panel and inverter losses, shading and missmatch losses, etc.) At the end all datas compared with real data and there is a difference of 0,31% between actual data and P50 data, 3,73% difference with P75 and 7,04% difference with P90 data. At this point, the results of the analysis with P75 uncertainty, which is frequently used by financial institutions, will be used for financial analysis, taking into account the risks that may arise in the future. Secondly In the light of comparison results; a configuration with a performance ratio of more than 80% was chosen for the selected 8 cities. For this configuration, panel-inverter compatibility is calculated via proper equities which is shown in this study. Mainly MPPT input current, minimum and maximum voltage of strings are the most important paremeters for operation of inverter and panels. For this comparation minimum and maximum temperature datas collected via turkish state meteorogical service website. Then via this temperature numbers, maximum panel temperatures put into effect in the equites for MPPT input current, minimum and maximum voltage of strings. This calculation made for each cities which are selected to analyze deeply to get financial result. Afterwards, appropriate costs were determined for each city. Feasibility study has been made together with the initial cost of investments via real market conditions. For each city land prices has been searched via real estate agency and land prices selected as average of this discussions. Then general costs of development phases studied via market players. For the phase of zoning plan and project approval part infos collected from project owners which are already operating solar energy power plant operators. General construction costs calculated via collected data and general market pricing. Together with all results Şanlıurfa has the highest development cost and lowest construction cost. When we have a look together with both development and construction cost, Edirne has the lowest total cost. At the end of the day as it seen from the investment costs, investment cost is not the main point of solar investment. Another important point is coming from solar resource study and credit situation. For the financial analysis development and construction costs used together with production data were obtained through PVSyst. Financial analysis was carried out with 100% equity for 8 selected cities and the quickest project calculated more deeply. At the results of financial analysis, together with the payback time method, fastest one Şanlıurfa is selected for detailed analysis. Depends on the Şanlıurfa project's detailed expenses, credit tables were obtained from one of the financial institutions for 25-29-33 installments (payments will be done each 3 months) with 1 year grace period together with 70% of credit and from 10% to 90% credit tables is calculated via this main tables. In the detailed analysis, calculation of the levelized cost of energy, net present value,payback time and internal rate of return are made. The selection of the appropriate project was based on the internal rate of return. In light of the results, various proposals have been made to arise the use of renewable resources, regional incentives and information.