Sustainable integration of photovoltaic systems globally – a financial and environmental assessment

Hebatallah Teamah, Mohamed Teamah

Abstract


The current work investigates the integration of a 6 MW grid-connected photovoltaic system on a continental level. The considered locations are: Washington, Ottawa, Brasilia, Berlin, Cairo, Beijing, and Canberra. As the locations spread throughout the world, they have a large variation in their irradiation level and climate conditions. The integrated PV system is simulated under real weather data imported from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) website. Payback period is used as an indicator of the financial viability of the project integration. Payback period is the lowest in Brasilia (8.5 years) and the highest in Berlin (17.7 years). The rest of considered locations show a payback period that is in between both locations. The proposed project mitigates greenhouse gas emissions by 82 tons in Brasilia and 39.9 tons in Berlin. Sensitivity analysis reported the effect of changing parameters like: initial cost and debt term on financial feasibility of the project. It is shown that increase in the initial cost is the most likely to cause the project to be infeasible in lower irradiance locations.

 

Received: 31 January 2026

Accepted: 27 March 2026

Published: 14 April 2026


Keywords


: solar, photovoltaic, financial assessment, environmental assessment, payback.

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DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21622/resd.2026.12.1.1934

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Copyright (c) 2026 Hebatallah Teamah, Mohamed Teamah

Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development

E-ISSN: 2356-8569

P-ISSN: 2356-8518

 

Published by:

Academy Publishing Center (APC)

Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT)

Alexandria, Egypt

resd@aast.edu