Viabilidade econômica da implantação de painéis fotovoltaicos para redução do consumo de energia elétrica no campus central da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte

Abstract

With environmental concerns that has emerged in recent decades as climate change, Brazil is investing in alternative technologies to create power with low carbon emissions. Among the renewable energy sources, the use of photovoltaic solar energy is expanding because it is considered a cleaner technology to create electricity than hydro and wind. In this context, the aim of this study was to evaluate the economic feasibility of the implementation of photovoltaic panels to produce electricity in the central campus of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), with the idea of reducing environmental impacts and their electric bills, which currently has an average monthly consumption of 2,070,756 KWh. In the proposed energy transformation system, only 10% of the buildings roof coverage area would be used, which would require the deployment of 11,597 photovoltaic panels, with 300W of power creation and total electrical output of 3,479 kWp. The initial investment is R$ 26,092,500.00, 1% of this amount allocated for maintenance and operation of the panels. The annual savings produced by the system was R $ 1,314,867.00 with an energy reduction of R$ 172.58 MW/h. The simple payback period of the investment would be in about 11 years, the life of the set of photovoltaic panels is of 25 years. Therefore, the use of photovoltaic panels to make electricity in central campus of UFRN presents economically viable and it reduces the environmental impacts caused by the institution's energy demand.