Sensitivity-Indices-Based Risk Assessment of Large-Scale Solar PV Investment Projects

Abstract

Large-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) generation is now a viable, economically feasible and clean energy supply option. Incentive schemes, such as the Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) in Ontario, have attracted large-scale investments in solar PV generation. In a previous work, the authors presented an investor-oriented planning model for optimum selection of solar PV investment decisions. In this paper, a method for determining the sensitivity indices, based on the application of duality theory on the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) optimality conditions, pertaining to the solar PV investment model is presented. The sensitivity of the investors' profit to various parameters, for a case study in Ontario, Canada are presented and discussed and these are found to be very close to those obtained using the Monte Carlo simulation and finite-difference (individual parameter perturbation) based approaches. Furthermore, a novel relationship is proposed between the sensitivity indices and the investor's profit for a given confidence level to evaluate the risk for an investor in solar PV projects.