A newer approach on cash flow diagram to investigate the effect of energy payback time and earned carbon credits on life cycle cost of different photovoltaic thermal array systems

• Effect of energy payback time on life cycle analysis.
• Effect of earned carbon credits on life cycle analysis.
• The annualized uniform cost analysis.

In this paper, three types of configurations have been considered namely (i) opaque type PVT array (case A) (ii) solar cell tile (SCT) array (case B) and (iii) semitransparent array (case C). The performances of all above cases have been computed using three basic metrics. These are the energy payback time (EPBT), the energy production factor (EPF) and the life cycle conversion efficiency (LCCE). When effect of EPBT is considered in the cash flow of the PVT array system, the annualized uniform cost has increased by 7.0% for lowest value and 16.5% for highest value on both energy and exergy basis. The values reflected this approach is more realistic than the conventional approach. While considering the effect of carbon credits earned and EPBT on annualized uniform cost of the PVT array system, the higher value of annualized uniform cost is indicative of better and efficient system which has the capability to compensate the cost incurred in the system. It has also been observed that among all the cases, case-C is a better performer in terms of energy and exergy.