Sustainable feasibility of solar photovoltaic powered street lighting systems

• Build the simulation model of street lighting systems for sustainability feasibility assessment.
• Investigate the local calculation conditions of the 14 cities of Hunan, China.
• Study the economic, environmental and technical sustainability based on the simulation results.
• Integrate the indicator into the general indicator for the feasibility assessment.

In the last few years, due to soaring fuel prices and gas emissions, renewable energy technologies have been suggested as the power source for infrastructures. The interest in solar photovoltaic (PV) assisted street lighting systems stems from the fact that they are sustainable and environmentally friendly compared to conventional energy powered systems. The present paper investigates and compares the economic feasibility of two types of systems: islanded and grid-connected system, for the street lighting systems in Hunan Province, China. Based on two options of solar panel materials, a simulation model of the system is developed for economic, technical and environmental feasibility. The comprehensively sustainability feasibility of these systems is conducted taking into account the cost, energy generation, CO2 emissions and renewable fraction. Radar plot is employed to integrate all the sustainability indicators into a general indicator, which presents system’s sustainability as a real number in the interval [0, 2]. Results show that for street lighting systems of all the cities, single crystal panel has a larger number of annual electricity generation, less emissions and higher environmental performance, but is more expansive than polycrystalline. It is also found that when the feed-in tariff higher than 1.27 CNY/kW h, the cost of energy (COE) of the solar powered lighting systems is less than a pure grid powered system. This will incite the use of solar PV in infrastructures. Through comparing the scores of sustainability, it is found that the Loudi system has the highest feasibility while the Yongzhou system has the lowest in the province.