Economic feasibility analysis of small scale PV systems in different countries

Over the last few years, feed-in tariff for PV Systems in many countries have been significantly reduced and new regulations are being placed to promote the development of renewable energy and support self-consumption by paying lower grid-injected electricity tariffs compared to regular electricity price. The purpose of this paper is to analyze a representative set of countries, including Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States of America, to identify the ones with the best investment opportunities considering the new regulations. Two case studies are included in this paper with different sizes of solar photovoltaic systems (1 kW and 5 kW). Each case study includes four different consumption scenarios ranging from 100% self-consumption to 30%. Overall, the results show that the most profit can be made in Australia, Germany, and Italy. In these countries, it is possible to quadruple the investment during the 25-year period with a 5 kW PV system which is roughly 13% higher than most European countries. Furthermore, this study explores the current policies and conditions of small-scale solar PV industry in the selected countries, providing enormous benefit to various entities namely policy makers, investors, and researchers who are working under the solar energy domain. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.