Techno-economic analysis of solar photovoltaic power plant for garment zone of Jaipur city

In this paper, the potential and the cost-effectiveness of a solar photovoltaic power plant for meeting the energy demand of garment zone at Jaipur (India) is analyzed. Also, the energy demand of garment zone for year 2011has been estimated (2.21 MW) and the design of the solar PV power plant of 2.5 MW capacity has been proposed, which requires about 13.14 acres of land area. Looking at the scarcity and cost of the land near the city, an off-site proposal for the power plant has also been considered and compared with the on-site option. For the on-site solar PV power plant internal rate of return (IRR) is 11.88%, NPV @ 10% discount rate is 119.52 million INR, simple payback period is 7.73 years and discounted payback period @10% is 15.53 years, while for the off-site power plant IRR is 15.10%, NPV is 249.78 million INR, simple payback period is 6.29 years and discounted payback period is 10.14 years. Levelized cost of energy is Rs. 14.94 and Rs. 11.40 per kW h for on-site and off-site solar PV plants respectively @ 10% discount rate, which is quite attractive.