The Possible contribution of photovoltaic systems to the electricity supply in some districts in Palestine

This thesis discusses the potential of solar energy to support and partly cover the energy demand in the medium voltage level electric supply grid in four cities in the West Bank, Palestine. The load profile for two days in the year (summer day and winter day) from four line sections (feeders) that feeds these districts in these cities has been taken from JEDCO. These cities are Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jericho. This thesis provides information on the solar power profile such as solar flux, energy yield and performance ratio on fixed tilted surface and different orientations. Different tools (applied here are the PVGIS data base and the WetSyn scheme) have been used to set up a data base for the meteorological input data for the estimation of the profile of output power of the PV system for the selected districts. The method that has been used to model the output power of a 2 kWP generator shows that this PV system can produce an average yield of 1902 kWh/kWp with horizontal orientation and 2009 kWh/kWp with an 18 degree tilt. A MW-size grid-connected system has been designed to cover the load in each selected district, where the percentages of the penetration levels for a MW PV system on distribution feeders at peak load in the summer day are 18.2, 8, 6.9, and 7 for the districts Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jericho respectively. While in the winter day the values are 13, 14.6, 5.93 and 9.8 for the same districts respectively. The system has been designed for two cases according to the land area available in these cities, where the land area that is needed is 17 500 m2 for Case1 and 3500 m2 for each subsystem in Case 2 and the expected energy gain is between 1980 – 2153 MWh/year. For this capacity value of PV system a total investment between 3500000 - 3820000 US$ is required depending on the location and the installation type. Cost analysis for a 200 kW ground mounted grid-connected PV system with subsidy to initial investment of 64 % shows that the investment period payback is about 9 years with annual saving 45000 US$