The Consortium has collected a list of prioritized Technical Risks in a technical Risk Matrix. The uncertainties associated to these technical risks have an impact on the initial yield assessment and consequently on the lifetime yield prediction. The Consortium was able to assess the economic impacts of the development phase technical risks on the PV plant performance and in addition, the Consortium has developed a cost-based FMEA to evaluate the technical risk impacts on PV plant performance during operation. Ultimately, this cost-based approach allows for assessing the economic impacts of the technical risks in PV system operation on the PV plant performance, i.e. the electricity production. The resulting documented Risk Matrix, the cost-based FMEA methodology, and the evaluation of the technical risks during PV system operation are presented in the joint Deliverable D1.1/2.1 and available on the Solar Bankability project website accessible by the public.
The benchmarking and gap analysis was used to identify the parameters in the PV LCOE which are influenced by the technical risks in the PV project lifecycle as identified in the Risk Matrix. The results were used to develop and establish ways to evaluate the technical risks when modelling the PV LCOE. A snapshot of the business models in representative national PV markets in EU was given and served to understand the current climate of existing business models used for PV investment and the corresponding features and boundary conditions. The results were used to select the appropriate cases in the simulation of different business models where the impacts of technical risks on the electricity production and expected return on investment were evaluated, The country business model snapshots are presented in the Deliverable D4.1 and available on the Solar Bankability project website accessible by the public.
Once the technical risks have been identified, the focus moved to the identification of mitigation measures divided into preventive and corrective mitigation measures. Their impact was assessed in terms of reduction of uncertainty in yield assessment and in the CPN (Joint Report 1.2/2.2) and in the LCOE (Report 3.2).
The CPN methodology was linked to cash flow modelling with the creation of technical risks scenarios on 4 different business models (residential with and without storage, utility scale with central and string inverters) and the results were collected in Report 4.2.
Finally, all the key findings and main outcomes were framed in a risk framework divided into 4 phases: risk identification, risk assessment, risk management, and risk controlling (Report 5.8). The main results of the projects can thus be summarised as:
- Risk identification (Gap analysis and Risk matrix for the common nomenclature of failures with tool available on the website)
- Risk Assessment (Scenarios in uncertainty calculation of yield assessment and impact on P90/P50 ratio, CPN methodology for the calculation of the economic impact of technical risks, cash flow modelling with the inclusion of technical risk scenarios, impact of technical risks on LCOE, LCOE tool available on the website)
- Risk Management (Definition of mitigation measures divided into preventive and corrective and impact on uncertainty in yield assessment and on CPN, impact of mitigation measures on LCOE to evaluate the best mitigation strategy)