An In-Depth Scientific Analysis of Rooftop Solar PV Power Potential to Facilitate Strategic Deployment and Implementation in Mauritius

The Small Island Developing State of Mauritius relies heavily on fossil fuel imports to satisfy the energy requirements of its population. A detailed study has been performed to investigate the photovoltaic potential at the city, district, and country levels in order to provide some tools that will facilitate an informed decision process to enhance energy security of the island using a geospatial-based methodology. Our theoretical computations indicate that the deployment of rooftop PV panels at the city level can contribute to about 3.6% of the annual electricity demand of the island. More significantly, deployment at the district and national levels have the potential to help meet half and twice, respectively, the electricity requirements of the country. In our current study an attempt has been made to perform an optimization analysis suggest a strategy for large scale deployment of rooftop photovoltaic systems to maximize high energy generations. The policy implications of such large-scale deployments are discussed with an emphasis on the need to increase the storage capacity to ensure reliability and flexibility of energy generation from solar energy technologies.