An Economic Evaluation of Grid Connected Photovoltaic System for a Residential House in Khartoum

The climatic conditions of Sudan are ideal for solar energy technology. In areas where grid is available grid connected systems are more advantageous. In this study economic evaluation of grid connected photovoltaic system for a residential house located in Khartoum has been conducted to provide information on economic viability of PV-grid connected system to assist taking the decision about system implementation. The proposed system was simulated using PVSYST software to obtain the energy output, and using Microsoft excel sheet the economic evaluation is conducted for two scenarios one with no incentive policies from the government and in this case the system will take 18 years before it starts to produce a profit with 4% internal rate of return. The other case is under the effect of the feed in tariff rate and the payback period is founded to be 9 years with 10% internal rate of return. The system produces 20707kWh yearly and the cost of the kWh is found to be 0.051$. The study is based on a pilot project of 5 kw PV grid connected system in the energy research center at the faculty of engineering, university of Khartoum.