Technical and Economical Feasibility of the Proposed Assiut University Rooftop PhotoVoltaic Installation

Rooftop PhotoVoltaic (PV) systems recently gain more focus due to size/power variability and environmental compatibility. This article advises a rooftop PV system for partially/fully fulfilling the load requirements of Assiut University main campus. The economical and technical viability of the proposed system are comprehensively investigated. Moreover, different configurations are examined while the focus was on the system cost, reliability and security. The sizing is carried out as constrained optimization problem. Particle swarm optimization was used to determine the optimal number of the proposed PV modules. The sizing procedure considered the expansion of the Assiut University power system until 2025. Therefore, robust and fairly accurate medium-term and long-term load forecasting models were used to identify the monthly/annually load values during 2019-2025. Load forecasting models and the sizing of the proposed PV system were coded in Matlab. Moreover, the results from the sizing were comprehensively validated via the comparison with reliable and robust sizing softwares as PVGIS and PVsyst. The results showed that there is albeit economical feasibility of the proposed rooftop PV system. Moreover, PSO produced better sizing than the softwares, while confining with the site structural and supply security constraints.