화학공학소재연구정보센터
Energy Conversion and Management, Vol.163, 493-506, 2018
On the equivalence and comparison of economic criteria for energy projects: Application on PV/diesel hybrid system optimal design
Several criteria have been used in the literature to make decision on the relevance/desirability of investing in a given energy production project. Some investors are interested on projects providing, at the end, a sufficient amount of benefits while in countries where the initial investment is crucial, the rapidity to get back the initial investment is an important criterion for the decision to invest into a project or not. Economic criteria can also allow to rank different projects. Finally they could also help to determine the optimal design of a project/system in order to maximize/minimize the economic returns of the project (benefit, time to get back the initial investment....). This paper aims to answer to the following question: under which hypothesis different economic criteria will lead to the same conclusion, that is the same decision concerning investment or the same ranking of different projects or the same optimal design of an energy project. Three concepts of equivalence of economic methods equivalence are introduced, namely the decision making equivalence, the optimal design equivalence and the ranking equivalence. the analysis performed is then applied to optimally design a PV/diesel hybrid power system for a rural area.