Competitiveness of grid connected photovoltaic power supply for a desalination plant under a prospective power market in Paraguay

This paper investigates the economic feasibility of utilizing partial photovoltaic (PV) power supply for a Brackish Water Reverse Osmosis (BWRO) Desalination plant in the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay. Paraguay does not currently have a power market with a daily spot-price variation, and the electricity prices are at a level where use of PV power is not economically beneficial. However, the prospective introduction of a power market will change the current scenario by introducing daily price variations that are expected to be strongly correlated to temperature and the solar irradiation pattern. Under such a scenario, PV power generation has the potential to reduce the consumption of grid power at peak prices, and by that reduce the overall cost of operating the desalination plant. A hypothetical power market is modelled and simulated in this paper. The expected price variation in this prospective power market are used to assess the increase in average power prices required before PV installations could become economically competitive for BWRO plants in the Gran Chaco region.