Abstract:

: Pakistan is a developing country that is facing its worst energy crisis in two decades. In recent years, the gap between demand and supply has multiplied. With increasing demand, this situation has triggered a complete power shutdown in urban areas for 10–12 h and rural areas for 16–18 h. The prime objective of this study is to evaluate the techno-economic feasibility of a 50 MW solar farm in Quetta, Pakistan. Solar radiation data are collected from radiation devices, i.e., a tier two weather station with a rotating shadow band irradiometer. The devices collected data every 10 min. The data were gathered for one year, and a techno-economic evaluation of the information has been carried out. For the proposed plant’s economic feasibility evaluation, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) model is used and estimates that the energy produced by the proposed power plant will cost 6 Pkr/kWh. Technical evaluation of the power plant reveals that 91.980 GWh of electricity can be produced per year at the capital cost of 59.689 million USD, with an O and M cost of 0.9 million USD/year and a 10.5498 discount rate (%). An economic evaluation of the proposed PV plant produces electricity at 0.0385 USD/kWh. The results of this study depict that a 50 MW PV plant will be feasible for Quetta.

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