Retrofitting Solar Power Systems on Public Street Lightings as A Dispersed Power Plant

The target of 23% use of renewable energy sources can be reached by 2025 by utilizing more renewable energy plants. There have been several efforts conducted to achieve the goal such as developing more wind power systems and solar Photovoltaic (PV) systems. This paper offers one method as an alternative option to support the 2025 Indonesian government target by retrofitting the conventional urban Public Street Lighting (PSL) with solar PV systems and introducing them as dispersed power plants. To examine what extent the feasibility of this concept, a comprehensive study is conducted by choosing one urban PSL system installations as a pilot project. The PSL system is located in the central Banda Aceh at coordinates of 5.543 Latitude North and 95.334 Longitude West. One PSL unit requires an area of 207 m
²
. Some indicators such as the performance ratio, electricity production and economic value are used to assess the feasibility of this concept. The findings of this study show that the retrofitted PSL can generate approximately 51.4 MWh of electricity annually under a daily average solar radiation of 4.61 kWh/m
²
and an ambient temperature of 27.52 °C in a year. The PSL systems have a performance ratio of 80.03%. From the economic standpoint, with the electricity selling price of 85% from the Aceh Basic Generation Cost (BGC), the generated electricity cost is at 9.47 cents USD/kWh. The Internal Rate of Return (IRR) reaches 4.21%. The Payback Period (PP) is after 13.85 years of operation. The Net Present Value (NPV) for the 20 years of the optimal operation reaches 29,913.18 USD. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the retrofitted urban PSL with solar PV systems as dispersed power plant are feasible to be implemented technically, while from the economic point of view, its implementation is only feasible if it is funded by the government.