The Statistical Assessment of the Technical and Policy-Based Implications of Utility Scale Solar Energy Deployment in the UK
Tez Türü: Yüksek Lisans
Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: The University of Birmingham, School of Engineering, Civil Engineering, İngiltere
Tez Danışmanı: Peter Braithwaite
Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2014
Tezin Dili: İngilizce
Desteklendiği Program: Diğer
Özet:
Electricity from solar power is one of the most commonly used renewable technologies across the world. Despite the high production cost originating from technical challenges, governments have begun to give subsidies to encourage its production via renewable-based policies in order to fulfil their low carbon targets.
British policies such as Renewable Obligations, FIT and others drive solar deployment for achieving British renewable targets. Although British solar deployment occupies a good position, it has been seen that its large scale deployment lags behind its small scale deployment. In order to identify the problem, this thesis attempts to assess British policy and technical effects regarding extensive solar deployment in the UK. SOLARge, a Matlab-based programme, has been developed to identify to what degree British policies and technical characteristics result in a barrier for large scale deployment. In order to do so, 264 scenarios based on three different locations, two different system capacities and three successive years, including 2014, were generated and inputted into the SOLARge.
The scenarios show that British policies drive the development of small scale solar deployment. In some scenarios, comparing large with small scale solar deployment, the differences between total earnings can be threefold while the difference between paybacks can exceed seven years.
The thesis also presents a) the reasons why such differences occur, b) possible outcomes regarding British solar future, c) the ways to eliminate these reasons.