Techno-Economic Analysis of Grid-connected Rooftop Solar PV Systems in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s Water and Electricity Regulatory Authority (WERA) approved and published regulations for small-scale PV solar systems in February 2020, allowing customers to generate and export surplus energy to the utility grid. This paper investigates the techno-economic analysis of grid-connected rooftop solar PV systems for different customer categories (residential and commercial) depending on a variety of factors, such as electricity tariff, export tariff, and load consumption. It outlines detailed analysis of the grid-connected rooftop solar PV system performance using Homer Grid simulation software. Using different economic indicators which namely are payback period and internal rate of return (IRR) to determine the system feasibility, the study gives a clear insight about the attractiveness of the investment for given end users.