An Overview of Rooftop Photovoltaic Power Plant Development Process in Iran

Rooftop photovoltaic power plants play a key role in energy transition. By conducting feed in tariff strategy in Iran, the number of installed rooftop solar power plants significantly increased in these years. For implementing this strategy, a comprehensive software framework was developed for investors, government sector, distribution system operators, contractors and other partners to manage construction process, electricity production and billing of photovoltaic power plants. By adopting that strategy and using this digital infrastructure in last 6 years about 7000 small scale photovoltaic power plants with 84 MW have been installed all over provinces in Iran. In this paper the distribution of power plants in different regions and related geographical effects were investigated based on vast gathered real data from the electricity production of power plants, then the monthly capacity factor as a critical technical issue was evaluated and compared with simulation data. Finally, the cost of rooftop solar electricity was evaluated based on the purchased bills and produced electricity with different scenarios in last 2 years.