16th International Middle- East Power Systems Conference -MEPCON'2014

Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, December 23 - 25, 2014

Sizing and Economic Analysis of Standalone PV

Systems for Residential Utilization
Sherif M. Imam
The Electrical Engineering Department,
Faculty of Engineering, Kafrelsheikh University
Kafrelsheikh, Egypt
Sherif_imam@eng.kfs.edu.eg
Abstract This paper presents a methodology to define the best
size of a standalone PV system and analyze the economics of the
entire system. Simplified mathematical expressions are derived
for sizing each subsystem in a generic form. The study is based
on a 5 kWh/day residential load with a peak power of 1300W.
The load peak power was taken into consideration when sizing
the inverter capacity. The relationship between the depth of
discharge (DOD) and the battery life-cycle time is studied to
obtain the optimum battery bank size for minimum cost. The
cost of each system component is analyzed based on
international prices and aggregated to obtain the overall cost of
energy (COE). The results of the analysis show that the COE
relies heavily on both the size and the designed voltage of the
battery bank, which in turn depends on the storage hours,
charger size and the (DOD) value.
Index Terms Battery life-cycle, Cost of energy, Depth of
discharge, PV module degradation, PV system.

List of symbols
Symbol
Description

Unit

A
AhB
BLC
CA
CBB
CBR
CChr
CCR
CIC
CInv
CIR
CLC
COE
COM
CPV
CTR
CW
CWh
CWp
DOD
ED
EL
ETot
Hsun

Days
Ah
Years
$/A
$/Wh
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$/KWh
$
$
$
$/W
$/Wh
$/W
%
Wh/day
Wh/day
Wh
h/day

Autonomy days
Battery Capacity
Battery life-cycle
Charger cost per amper
Battery bank cost
Batteries replacement cost
Charger cost
Charge controller replacement cost
Initial capital cost
Inverter cost
Inverter replacement cost
Life cycle cost
Cost of energy
Operation & Maintenance cost
PV array cost
Total replacement cost
Inverter cost per watt
Battery cost per watt hour
PV cost per peak watt
Depth of discharge
Designed electrical load
Average electrical load
Total generated energy
Average sunshine hours per day

Ahmed M. Azmy, E. Rashad

Electrical Power and Machines Engineering Department,
Faculty of Engineering, Tanta, University,
Tanta, Egypt
(azmy.ahmed@hotmail.com, emrashad@ieee.org)
GS
i
Kh
Kr
Ku
n
NB
PCB
PCChr
PCInv
PMax
PSVPVS
PV
SVB
v
VB
VBB
ZBB
ZChr
ZInv
ZPV
Chr
Inv

The relative solar irradiation

Interest rate
Forecasted battery health
Relative cost of refurbishment
Used product discount
Battery cycle life
Number of batteries
Present battery cost for future investment
Present charger cost for future investment
Present inverter cost for future investment
Maximum continuous load power
Present salvage value
Photovoltaic
Future battery salvage value
Replacement periods
Single battery voltage
Battery bank designed voltage
Battery bank size
Charge controller capacity
Inverter capacity
PV array size
Charger efficiency
Inverter efficiency
Uncertainty factor

%
%
%
%
%
Years
$
$
$
W
$
$
Years
V
V
Ah/day
A
W
W
%
%

I. INTRODUCTION
Both the high concern over depletion and cost of fossil
energy resources leads to the interest in developing high
efficiency, low cost and clean energy generation methods [1].
This is attributed also to the environmental pollution
associated with fossil energy resources. Photovoltaic (PV) is
considered to be one of the most important renewable energy
systems regarding this direction [2]. Concerning the running
cost, standalone PV systems (SAPVs) represent an alternative
energy source that provides low cost and unpolluted power
generation. Since PV cell cannot store energy by itself and
the power of PV cell is greatly influenced by light intensity
and temperature, a battery bank is required to store the energy
of the PV system.
A review of the current status of the PV market and recent
results on several advanced types of solar cells are introduced
in [3]. Many researches conveyed different PV technologies

16th International Middle- East Power Systems Conference -MEPCON'2014

Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, December 23 - 25, 2014

II.

SIZING METHODOLOGY AND COST ANALYSIS OF PV

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

The sizing method adopted for stand-alone PV system is

performed as follows:
A. Defining the electrical load
A typical residential load is analyzed as shown in table 1 to
define its average daily consumption. In the table, the average
electrical load (EL) for a household is about 5kWh/day. The
designed load for the PV system should be higher than the
actual load to overcome load fluctuations, power losses and
the uncertainty in the SAPV system components.
Table 1: Electrical load on SAPV power system.
Power
Working
Total Energy
Appliance
Number
[W] hours [h/day] [Wh/day]
Ceiling fan
2
60
5
600
Lamps
6
40
6
1440
Refrigerator
1
175
6
1050
TV
1
150
3
450
Water pump
1
245
3
735
Washing machine
1
370
2
740
Total[EL]
5015

The designed electrical load (ED) will be [5]:

ED EL

(1)

B. Defining sunshine hours for the load location

The number of sunshine hours in Egypt varies from 6.4 to
11.9 hours. The assumed value for this paper will be the
average sunshine hours per day for Helwan, which equals 9.5
(h/day) [9, 10].

C. Determination of PV array size

The PV array size is determined by the following equation
[5]:
Z PV

ED
H sun

(2)

The PV module is designed for standard solar irradiation

of 1000 W/m2. Since the average solar irradiation in Egypt is
about 735 W/m2 [11, 12], Eq. (2) should be modified as
follows:
Z PV

ED
GSHsun

(3)

The number of PV modules is determined according to

the peak watt of the PV module available in the market and
the desired battery bank voltage. The PV modules available
in the market range from 30 W to 300 W, and the common
operating voltages of the PV array and battery bank
combination system are 12, 24 and 48 V.
D. Determination of battery bank size
The battery bank size can be determined using the
following equations [5]:
A
E
D
DOD VB
Z
N B BB
AhB

ZBB

(4)
(5)

The number of autonomy days for the PV system is

determined according to the cloudy days. The relationship
between the depth of discharge (DOD) value and the cycles
to failure is different for each type of battery. As shown in
figure 1, the DOD value should be decreased to improve the
battery life [13].
60

50
The battery life-cycles [Years]

and defined the reasons preventing their utilization in large

scales [3, 4]. A methodology is introduced in [5] to evaluate
size and cost of SAPV power system components for constant
electrical load of 9 kWh/day. However, this research didn't
pay attention to neither PV module degradation nor the
maximum continuous load for sizing the inverter. An efficient
sizing method for a stand-alone PV system is introduced in
[6]. However, this research didn't consider the optimum DOD
value for batteries. Simulation and optimization of the gridconnected PV system of residential power supplying system
in Queensland, Australia are introduced in [7]. However, this
research didn't consider the effect of the battery bank voltage
on the COE. Sizing of a standalone photovoltaic system at
minimum cost for remote housing electrification is introduced
in [8]. However, this research considered the salvage value as
a fixed cost of the initial system cost.
The aim of this work is to design a standalone PV system
for residential utilization and study the economic effect of
each PV system component on the COE. Both the PV module
degradation and the salvage value of the battery bank were
taken into consideration in this study. The optimum DOD
value and the battery bank voltage are studied for minimum
COE.

40

30

20

10

0
0

0.2

0.4
0.6
The depth of discharge [%]

0.8

Figure 1: The relation between the battery DOD value and its life
cycles.

E. Defining charge controller capacity and inverter size

The charge controller capacity and the inverter size can be
determined as illustrated in [5]. However, the charger
efficiency and the maximum continuous load have to be
considered when sizing the charger and the inverter
respectively. Therefore, the relations given in [5] are
modified to obtain the charger capacity and the inverter size
as in the following equations:

16th International Middle- East Power Systems Conference -MEPCON'2014

Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, December 23 - 25, 2014

Z Chr

Chr

Z
PV
VBB

P
Z Inv Max
Inv

(6)
(7)

F. Cost analysis of PV system components

The cost of PV module is determined based on the peak
watt of the PV array size multiplied by the cost of the PV per
peak watt as follows:
(8)
C PV Z PV C Wp
The cost of battery bank is determined based on the actual
battery bank size in watt hour multiplied by the battery cost
per watt hour as follows:
CBB NB VB AhB CWh
(9)
The cost of power conditioning equipment, like charge
controller and inverter, can be obtained from Eqs. (10) and
(11), by multiplying the size of each device with its per unit
cost.
CChr ZChr C A
(10)
C Inv Z Inv C W

(11)

G. The life-cycle cost methodology of PV system

The life-cycle of each component of the PV system differs
from each other. Figure 2 shows the life-cycle of each PV
system components and its replacement times.

Figure 2: The life-cycle of each PV system components and its

replacement times.

The useful life of PV array is 30 years with 0.5% module

degradation per year [14]. For PV array system, the life-cycle
cost (CLC) can be calculated according to the following
formula [5]:
CLC CIC COM CTR PSVPVS
(12)
The CIC is the sum of the capital cost of each PV system
component plus the cost of system wiring and structure
support of hardware on the residential rooftop. COM consists
mostly of two terms. The first one is adjusting PV modules
tilt and cleaning it to remove dirt and dust. The other one is
the batteries maintenance such as adding water and cable
checking.

The total replacement cost can be calculated by summing

the replacement cost of the battery bank, the charger and the
inverter according to the formula:
CTR CBR CCR CIR
(13)
The relationship between the battery life-cycles and the
DOD value, which is illustrated in figure 1, can be obtained
from the following equation [13]:
U0

1
U 1 / DOD
BLC U 2
e
DOD
1

(14)

The battery reaches its end-of-life when it can no longer

provide 80% of its peak power. The calendar life of battery
and power conditioning equipment in the stationary
application is estimated to be 5 years for batteries at 50%
DOD value and 10 years for inverter and charge controller
[13, 15-17].
Assuming that the replacement cost of battery bank and
power conditioning equipment remains constant during the
life of PV system, the present cost of battery bank for future
investments can be determined as follows:
CBB
PC B
(15)
1 i v
Since the battery bank will be replaced every five years,
the present battery cost for future investment will be as
follows:
C
PC B BB , v 5,10,..., 25
(16)
1 i v
The present cost of inverter and charge controller for
future investments can be calculated similar to the battery but
every ten-year intervals as follows:
PC Inv

C Inv
, v 10, 20
1 i v

(17)

PC Chr

C Chr
, v 10, 20
1 i v

(18)

The salvage value of the system depends only on the

salvage value of the batteries because of two reasons. Firstly,
the PV module efficiency is decreased over its life time.
Secondly, there is no existing reliable secondary market for
either power condition equipment that were produced 10
years ago or PV modules that were produced 30 years ago.
The salvage value of power conditioning equipment and PV
modules will equal their scrap value. Their present scrap
values will be too tiny to be taken into consideration. The
salvage value of the batteries can be calculated as follows
[18]:
SVB Kh 1K r Ku CBB
(19)
SVB ,n=5,10,15,,30
(20)
PSV

PVS
1i n
The COE can be calculated by dividing the life cycle cost
of the system over the total generated energy during the
system life cycle of the PV array. The total generated energy
of the PV array over the life cycle of the PV module with

16th International Middle- East Power Systems Conference -MEPCON'2014

Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, December 23 - 25, 2014

degradation in its efficiency by 0.5% per year is illustrated in

figure 3. The COE can be calculated as follows:
C
(21)
COE LC
E Tot
3

Total generated energy [MWh]

2.5

1.5

0.5

10

15

20

25

30

Years

Figure 3: The generated energy over the life cycle of the PV array.

III.

SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The previous sizing methodology has been implemented

for Helwan city in Egypt. The solar radiation and other
meteorological parameters have been taken from Ref. [9].
The various parameters that have been used in this study are
listed in table 2 [5,13,18].
Table 2: Parameters setting.
Parameter
Symbol
Uncertainty factor
Inverter efficiency
Charger efficiency
Average sunshine hours
Autonomy days
Depth of discharge value
Interest rate

Inv
Chr
Hsun
A
DOD
I

The relative solar irradiation

IS

Forecasted battery health

Relative cost of refurbishment
Used product discount
Annual discount rate

Kh
Kr
Ku
R
U0
U1
U2

Eq.(14) parameters for "VRLA" battery

Value
1.5
90%
90%
9.5
1.1
47%
6%
0.76
80%
15%
15%
2.5%
0.19
1.69
765

A computer program is used to perform system

calculations to determine the size and the percentage cost of
each component in the PV system based on the parameters
defined through previous sizing methodology.
The obtained results indicate that the total required PV array
size is 1064 W. Since the nearest standard size in the market
is 100 W at 12 V each, the PV array will consist of 11
modules.
The sun shines 341 day over the year in Egypt. In this paper,
the number of autonomy days for the PV system is taken as
1.1. The economic size of the battery bank has to be designed

taking into account both the battery life-cycle and the DOD
value. Increasing the battery life-cycle will reduce the battery
cost where the number of battery replacement will decrease.
In addition, when the DOD value is decreased, the battery
size has to be increased, which will increase the battery cost.
However, reducing the DOD value results in an increase in
the battery life-cycle as indicated in figure 1. Therefore, the
optimal size of the battery bank is achieved for a certain value
of DOD, which can be termed optimum DOD since it results
in the minimum cost. A computer program is designed to
obtain the optimum DOD value by the following procedure:
First, the battery life-cycle is obtained in terms of the DOD
value according to Eq.(14). Based on the obtained value of
the battery life-cycle, the number of battery replacements
over the PV lifetime is calculated. Then, the number of
battery replacements over the PV lifetime is multiplied by the
inverse of the DOD value. The inverse of the DOD value
represents a multiplication factor by which the battery size
has to be increased to take into consideration the capability of
the battery for discharging. The optimum DOD value can be
obtained by differentiating the last value and equating the
resulted equation with zero.
For the investigated case study, the optimum DOD value
will be 47%. Since the autonomy days and the DOD value are
taken into account when the battery bank size is computed,
the number of batteries obtained in fraction was rounded off.
The designed number of batteries required for the existing PV
system was determined as 9.05 batteries based on Eqs. (4)
and (5). The number of batteries has to be approximated to
match the input voltage of the inverter, which is usually 24V
or 48V for small ratings. This is achieved in such a way that
the number of batteries can be divided by 2 or 4. The
approximated number of batteries has four possible cases
which are summarized in table 3. The DOD changes as the
number of batteries changes and accordingly the replacement
periods. This affects also the COE with the new values
calculated based on Eqs. 4, 14 and 21 as given in Table 3.
Table 3: Possible cases for approximating the batteries
number.
Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4
8
9
10
12
NB
48
12
24
48
VBB (V)
54%
47%
43%
36%
DOD
5
6
6.5
7.5
BLC (Years)
No. of battery
5
4
4
3
replacements
0.187
0.198
0.197
0.203
COE ($/Kwh)
For case 3, the battery salvage value of the final
replacement period is increased by the amount of remaining
battery life-cycles to the total battery life-cycles. According
to table 3, the most economic solution is case 1. In the
existing system, the designed number of batteries is taken as
8 batteries each has 12 V and 160 Ah capacity. There are two
parallel strings each consists of four series connected
batteries to form a battery bank of 48 V and 320 Ah capacity.

16th International Middle- East Power Systems Conference -MEPCON'2014

Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, December 23 - 25, 2014

According to Eq.(6), the charge controller capacity will be

22.9A. The nearest standard charge controller available in the
market is 30A. In this study, the maximum continuous load is
about 1300W. The nearest standard inverter available in the
market is 1500W. The cost of O&M and system wiring and
mounting hardware is about 1% of the initial hardware
system cost and 0.4$/W respectively. This is reported by
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) [19].
Table 4 summarize the cost of each PV system component
regarding Eqs. (8) through (21) and based on the websites
[20, 21].
Table 4: Cost of each PV system component.
Item
Cost
PV array
$3718
Battery bank
$3226
Charge controller
$176
Inverter
$1073
Wiring & mounting support
$426
Initial cost of PV system
$8619
O & M cost
$862
Present value of battery replacement
$7315
Present value of charger replacement
$153
Present value of inverter replacement
$933
Present value of battery salvage value
$3859
The life cycle cost
$14023
The average cost of energy
0.187 $/KWh
The pie-chart illustrated in figure 4 shows the percentage
cost of each component of the PV system within 30 years of
PV life time.

percentage cost of the PV modules are increasing over the life

of the PV system as its effeciency decreases by a degradation
factor of 0.5% per year. The percentage cost of the power
conditioning equipment is slightly changing.

Figure 5: The percentage cost of each PV system component every 5

years.

Due to the variety of operating voltages of the PV array

and the battery bank, e.g. 12, 24 and 48 V, the relation
between the battery bank voltage and the charger size has to
be studied. The target is to define the best operating voltage
that provides the minimum cost of energy. According to this
study, figure 6 is illustrated to show the relationship between
the battery bank voltage and the COE. When the battery bank
voltage increases, the charger size decreases, which yields a
decrease in the CLC and accordingly in the COE.

10%
1%

0.21
0.2

PV array
Battery Bank
Charger
Inverter

0.19
0.18
0.17

63%

COE [$/KWh]

26%

0.16
Figure 4: The % cost of each PV system component over 30 years.

The analysis shows that the COE relies heavily on the cost
of battery bank then on the cost of PV modules. Power
conditioning equipment make up only about 11% of the
whole cost.
As the calendar life of battery and power conditioning
equipment are 5 years and 10 years respectively, it is
concluded that the COE changes every 5 years over the PV
life time. The percentage cost of each component of PV
system is computed every 5 years and the result is illustrated
in figure 5.
The bar graph shows that the percentage cost of the
battery bank is the greatest percentage value compared to
other PV system components along the system life time. The

48 V

24 V

12 V

Battery bank voltage [V]

Figure 6: The relationship between the battery bank voltage and the
COE.

IV.

CONCLUSION

An economic analysis of a stand-alone PV system for

residential applications is carried out in this paper to define
the size of each PV system components. Through the
economic analysis, the COE is calculated in detail over the
PV life time. The PV module degradation, the battery depth
of discharge, and the battery salvage value are considered in
the calculation. The replacement cost of battery bank and

16th International Middle- East Power Systems Conference -MEPCON'2014

Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, December 23 - 25, 2014

power conditioning equipment considered to be uniform over

the PV life time. The analysis showed that the cost of battery
bank plays the major role for defining the COE. To reduce
the COE and to enhance system economics, the cost of
battery bank should be reduced or the solar energy should be
stored using other configurations. Although the charger has
the smallest percentage cost in the PV system, it can decrease
the COE by more than 12% if the battery bank voltage is
increased to 48V.
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