Life cycle comparison of potential scenarios to achieve the foremost performance for an off-grid photovoltaic electrification system

Abstract The search for reliable, economic, and environmentally friendly power sources to meet the increasing demand for electrical energy has become essential all around the world due to growing concerns such as energy shortage and environmental issues. Considering the point that the challenges are much more serious for remote areas, this study aims at designing an off-grid photovoltaic (PV) system to provide electricity for a rural place by energy, economic, and environmental (3E) multi-objective optimization. Performance ratio (PR) and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) are energy and economic objectives while damage to human health (DHH), damage to ecosystem (DE), and damage to resources (DR) are the environmental ones. The tilt angle is chosen as the decision variable, and by considering different tracking strategies and battery types, different optimization scenarios are defined. The optimized answers are compared together, and the best of them is selected. A rural place in Iran is investigated as the case study, and, a comprehensive comparative study from 3E aspects is conducted to show the enhancement potential of the best optimization scenario in details. The life cycle assessment method is also employed to study environmental impact of operational scenarios more comprehensively. It is found that the best optimization scenario is the combination of the fixed panel tilt angle tracking strategy and Li-ion batteries. For this optimization strategy, the tilt angle is 12.0°. Moreover, the obtained results indicate that, 3E aspects have to be considered together to achieve the best condition for an off-grid PV system while the best scenario is much better than using the grid.