A General Review on Photovoltaic, Modeling, Simulation and Economic Study to Build 100 MW Power Plant in Lebanon

The goal of this paper is to study the possibility to build a 100 MW Photovoltaic Plant in small countries like Lebanon, it gives a general review about the basis of photovoltaics. Different electronic models of photovoltaic cells are presented. This paper presents also the functioning of a photovoltaic cell, its model using MATLAB/Simulink, and discusses some algorithms used to extract the maximum power from a PV panel. Simulated results are presented. Economic study to build a 100 MW photovoltaic farm in Lebanon is discussed, with a comparative table between its tariff and existing tariffs such as from Power Authority, Private Generators, and Regional Distributors. Some other solutions are proposed to build PV panels and plant above unused surfaces such as above lakes, rivers and rooftops are also proposed for the Lebanese case.

Aims: The aim of this study is to help the reader to acquire sufficient information about Photovoltaic System and its function, MATLAB/Simulink Model, used Algorithms, and the most important thing is to compare its economic study for the Lebanese case to see if it is possible to build 100 MW in Lebanon or not. The same study can be used for other countries, but of course the values might change.

Study Design: This study used the software MATLAB/Simulink to model the Photovoltaic module, The economic study is based on other studies, but it is developed for the Lebanese case.

Place and Duration of Study: This study was made by the authors during the year 2014 in Lebanon.

Methodology: The economic study is studied based on other studies in the world, but for this time, it is made for the Lebanese case, and the Farm used produces 100 MW which is not done before in Lebanon. The tariffs of the existing sources are compared with the tariff of the proposed study, and based on it, one can choose if it is profitable to build such project in Lebanon or not.

Results: The main interesting results in this paper are that the construction of PV Farm in Lebanon is possible if it is encouraged by the Government, its tariff is less than other sources of energy such as the Private Generator and Regional Distributor, but it can’t be competitive with the power authority for several reasons, the authors also propose to use the surfaces of rivers, lakes and top roofs in order to build PV Farms, for instance if one uses the lake Qaraoun in Bekaa, it is possible to produce between 600 MW and 1200 MW which is approximately equal to 26.5% to 53% of the total produced power in Lebanon. Thus the production of such power can resolve big problems in Lebanon such as the cut off of the electricity every day for about 12 hours.

Conclusion: The photovoltaic system is preferred with respect to other sources of energy. The future of photovoltaics is promising, the efficiency increases each year and it is expected to over pass 50% in the next decades, the price of photovoltaic system is decreasing which will give it advantages with respect to other renewable energy systems.

In conclusion, this paper presents a general review on photovoltaic system. The models and mathematical expressions of photovoltaic cells are presented. The MATLAB model of the standard expression of photovoltaic module is designed. The results are discussed, many characteristics such as I-V curves and P-V curves are simulated using different parameters. An economic study of building 100 MW photovoltaic farm is presented and discussed. Some advantages and disadvantages of different algorithms are discussed. Finally, the usage of unused surfaces such as above lakes and rivers may be very efficient for small countries like Lebanon, and the produced power using these surfaces is approximately the half produced power in Lebanon, therefore, this paper may be very helpful to resolve the problem of electricity in Lebanon and any other country which has the same characteristics and problems as for Lebanon.