Economic analysis of PV systems on buildings in Sicilian farms

Abstract

The photovoltaic sector in Italy in recent years has experienced a rapid growth also in the primary sector, thanks to substantial incentives guaranteed by energy policies, simultaneous reduction of investment costs and tax benefits. In order to better understand the growth of the PV industry in Italian primary sector, the aim of this paper has been to evaluate the economic convenience of four PV systems on farm buildings located in four different farms of the north-western coast of Sicily and realized during the second and fourth Italian feed-in schemes. For each feed-in scheme it has been considered a PV plant that sells the electricity to the grid and another in which the energy generated is consumed entirely by thefarm. The results show a clear convenience to the realization of investments both with the current market conditions and at the variation of the feed-in tarif for the investment costs.