Photovoltaic Power Generation - Renewable Energy: Technology, Economics and Environment - page 289

installations, such as meter box, meter box installation and connection to the grid.
Assuming sufficient experience of the contractor, design costs can be estimated at
a maximum of 2 % of the overall plant investment costs (also refer to /6-35/, /6-
36/).

Operation costs. Operation costs include maintenance and servicing costs as well
as further expenses (e.g. repairs, module cleaning, meter rent, insurance). Accord-
ing to the installation type and the plant size the annual operating costs are be-
tween 5 and 30 €/kW. For the analysed reference plants running expenses (Table
6.4) amount to approximately 30 €/a for the 3 kW plant, 800 €/a for the 20 kW
plant and to 108,000 €/a for the 2,000 kW plant.

Power production costs. By means of the annuity method electricity generation
costs can be calculated on the basis of overall investments and annual operating
costs. For this purpose a real interest rate of 4.5 % and depreciation period over a
technical lifetime of 30 years is assumed. Table 6.4 shows the calculated power
production costs pertaining to the analysed reference models.
Fig. 6.32 shows the resulting specific electricity generation costs for photovol-
taically generated electrical energy exemplary for Site 1. According to this dia-
gram the provision costs decrease with increasing installed plant capacity; this
applies in particular to capacities between 1 and 5 kW. For example for a 1.5 kW
plant provided with multi-crystalline photovoltaic modules power production
costs are roughly between 0.50 and 0.60 €/kWh. By installing a 3 kW generator
these costs can be reduced to approximately 0.40 to 0.55 €/kWh. With continuing
increasing plant capacities specific production costs are even further reduced. For
a 2,000 kW plant they are still in the range of 0.34 to 0.38 €/kWh.

0.70

0.60

0.50

0.40

0.30

0.20

0.10

0.00

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1 000 0 2 000 50

Fig. 6.32 Average specific power production costs of current multi-crystalline photo-
voltaic generators assuming Middle European radiation conditions (Site 1)

Installed electrical power in kW

For a system with roof-installed multi-crystalline modules the mean real power
generation costs are thus expected to be between 0.40 and 0.55 €/kWh (Site 1).
The illustrated range is due to regional radiation variations in Middle Europe and