424 Solar Photovoltaics—Fundamentals, Technologies and Applications Unit amplitude sine-wave kei sid volage—| Low pass filter [ok ‘All pean fier Comp- alah | Logical + x ‘control FS SUL Cf aw MAEM ae pe Comp- | |_ifier arator_ > ag ane) pac | IME ‘nv ——+| Vekp) (consand) Implemented using DSP Fig. 14.20 Control scheme used for the single-stage grid-connected PV system shown in Fig, 14.19. generator. The period within which the invested money can be recovered or saved is known as Payback period. The estimation of payback period can be done in two ways: (a) by estimating the simple payback period and (b) by estimating the lifecycle cost (LCC) of the system. Among these the estimation of simple payback period is relatively easy and straightforward, which is discussed in this section. The estimation of lifecycle cost is little complicated. It is discussed in the Section 14.9, The simple payback period is the amount of time that is obtained by dividing the initial investment in a PV system by the cost of annual energy savings due to the PV system in which money is invested. Thus, if the initial investment cost is X and the annual cost of energy saving is Y, then Simple payback period = X years (143) In this way, it is easy to calculate the simple payback period. But parallel with simplicity, the simple payback period also has limitations. It fails to factor in several important parameters in estimation such as time value of money, inflation rate, lifetime of the system and operation and maintenance costs (these parameters are taken into account in LCC). Due to this reason, the simple payback period is only useful for making ballpark estimates of how long it will take to recover an initial investment. Let us take an example of the stand-alone PV system designed in Section 14.3.4 (Example 14.2). A list of various components of the PV system and their cost is given in Table 14.2. As per Table 14.2, the total cost of the system or the initial investment in the system is $4480. Now let us find out how much cost is saved in a year due to the designed PV system. The PV system is designed to supply 2820 Wh or 2.82 kWh of daily load. Assuming the location at which the PV system is to be installed does not have grid electricity, the electricity is