Technoeconomic analysis of rooftop PV system in elevated metro station for cost-effective operation and clean electrification

Metro system constitutes an essential component of urban transportation infrastructure, simultaneously serving as a significant energy consumer and carbon emitter. Integration of rooftop PV systems in elevated stations can effectively mitigate carbon emissions and enhance the utilization rate of clean energy. Nevertheless, current research rarely explores the application and feasibility analysis of rooftop PV systems in elevated metro stations. To address this research gap, the study investigates potential of rooftop PV systems applied in the elevated stations, and optimizes the PV scale and battery capacity for achieving the maximum net present value. The results show that the optimized photovoltaic-battery (PVB) system can bring about a PV self-sufficiency (SS) of 0.54, in the baseline scenario. For the entire line, SS can achieve 0.26–0.59 with the integration of PVB systems. Furthermore, the impact of skylights on energy consumption for illumination and PV power generation is discussed, and the PV potential of skylights is investigated. The results show that PV skylights lead to an increase a rise in the SS of 8.6%–15.3%. This study contributes reference for the potential of PV systems on elevated stations and for cost-effective operation and clean electrification of the urban rail transit sector.