Photovoltaic Energy Potential and its Impact on Electricity Demand Profiles

The government of Myanmar has recently embarked on an ambitious program aimed at providing electricity to 100% of the country’s households by 2030. At the same time, the government has also set goals for achieving a more sustainable energy mix by incorporating more Renewable Energy (RE) sources into their electricity network. Solar photovoltaic (PV) is one of the most promising RE technologies and a number of studies have shown that Myanmar has tremendous PV potential in large parts of the country. This paper investigates the solar-PV potential of a selected location in Myanmar and determines the impacts of diurnal PV profiles on current and future electricity demand profiles. Results show that the diurnal output profiles of PV installations in tropical environments like that of Myanmar are a good match to the projected loads for local urban environments. While the results demonstrate that PV is a suitable energy source for developing countries with climates similar to Myanmar, they also point to the importance of including the annual load increase rate and the PV output degradation rate in system planning.