Building Applied Photovoltaic Systems in Iran: Opportunities and Challenges

Continuous use of fossil fuels for several centuries and, especially in the last century, has caused many problems for the Earth and its inhabitants, which are mentioned with the title of climate change. Fighting this ruinous phenomenon requires modification of processes in many areas. The use of renewable energies to produce electricity is one of these solutions. In the meantime, using solar energy, whose most popular tool is the photovoltaic system (PV), is one of the best and most feasible methods. Likewise, despite the existence of rich fossil fuel reserves in Iran, the use of renewable energies and mostly the PV system is welcomed because of climate change, air pollution, and energy consumption. The household sector is one of the most important energy consumers in Iran and also the world. Therefore, employing the PV system through Building Integration (BI) and Building Connectivity/Applicability (BA) is taken into consideration more than ever. BAPV is a more prominent PV system in Iran because of its simplicity in installation and operation and also due to its economic aspects. The BAPV system has a history of three decades, has received the most governmental support, and is of the small-scale PV systems. Due to the price indices and market price changes in the last years in Iran, using BAPV requires new research work. The current study primarily evaluates the climate conditions of Iran. This evaluation shows that Iran has suitable solar potential according to its geographical location. Meantime, Tehran is a suitable place for employing BAPV because of air pollution, population density, and high solar potential, and also it’s suitable in terms of weather conditions. In order to evaluate this subject, Tehran’s meteorology data are computed by long-term meteorology and satellite data. Afterward, these data are used for the techno-economic evaluation of an on-grid BAPV system of capacity 19.5 kW in Tehran. Results show that the performance ratio of this system is 75.6%, and it can produce 29 MWh of power per year. Moreover, by using this system, it is possible to prevent 17 tons of CO2 gas emissions per year. On the other hand, an economic analysis of the system shows that despite the optimistic assumption of some indexes and policies, the payback period is 8 years which is not very satisfactory. Therefore, revising the energy policies, like reforming the electricity subsidy for users consuming power and increasing the governmental support of PV systems, can increase the solar power influence.