Analysis of photovoltaic potential in urban areas: the effect of the eurozone financial crisis

The aim of this paper is to estimate how the profitability of grid-connected PV systems may vary month by month due to the changes in all parameters involved in the economic evaluation (discount rate, PV electricity selling price, inflation rate, price of PV devices etc.). The effects of these variations were investigated for a district of a city in the South Italy (Palermo) by means of a methodology appropriately defined to explore the architectural morphology of buildings and evaluate the solar potential of PV systems installed on roofs. The results of the analysis provide the trend of the actual coverage of the district power demand from June 2010 to March 2011. Finally, a sensitivity analysis related to shading and mismatch factors was carried out.