Economics of residential photovoltaic and wind systems in Arizona and California

Renewable energy has been a very hot topic in recent years due to the traditional energy crisis. Incentives that encourage the renewables have been established all over the world. Ordinary homeowners are also seeking ways to exploit renewable energy. In this thesis, residential PV system, wind turbine system and a hybrid wind/solar system are all investigated. The solar energy received by the PV panels varies with many factors. The most essential one is the irradiance. As the PV panel been installed towards different orientations, the incident insolation received by the panel also will be different. The differing insolation corresponds to the different angles between the irradiance and the panel throughout the day. The result shows that for PV panels in the northern hemisphere, the ones facing south obtain the highest level insolation and thus generate the most electricity. However, with the two different electricity rate plans, flat rate plan and TOU (time of use) plan, the value of electricity that PV generates is different. For wind energy, the wind speed is the most significant variable to determine the generation of a wind turbine. Unlike solar energy, wind energy is much more regionally dependent. Wind resources vary between very close locations. As expected, the result shows that, larger wind speed leads to more electricity generation and thus shorter payback period. For the PV/wind hybrid system, two real cases are analyzed for Altamont and Midhill, CA. In this part, the impact of incentives, system cost and system size are considered. With a hybrid system, homeowners may choose different size combinations between PV and wind turbines. It turns out that for these two locations, the system with larger PV output always achieve a shorter payback period due to the lower cost. Even though, for a longer term, the system with a larger wind turbine in locations with excellent wind resources may lead to higher return on investment. Meanwhile, impacts of both wind and solar incentives (mainly utility rebates) are analyzed. At last, effects of the cost of both renewables are performed.