Analysis of Factors Influencing Adoption of Solar Photovoltaic System as Power Source in Residential Buildings in Tamil Nadu State of India through TOPSIS

Abstract

In recent times and in many countries, solar PV systems have gained acceptance as a source of clean energy at the household level. Adoption of solar PV systems at the household level can provide an environment-friendly solution to electricity shortage and can reduce the burden on the grid thus freeing up precious electricity for other applications. The objective of this study is to find out the salient factors influencing the adoption of solar photovoltaic systems for individual households and to find out if there is any difference in the adoption of solar photovoltaic systems (SPVS) among the households with differing income levels, and their place of residence namely rural and urban place. Further, TOPSIS is applied to ranking the groups of households based on the influencing factors. Data was collected from respondents in rural and urban areas, living in own and rented houses. Respondents also represented various income strata. The respondents were selected based on their domicile nature, that is, whether they lived in their own houses or live in rented houses. A questionnaire was developed based on the five factors mentioned above and administered to respondents from different localities. TOPSIS method was applied to rank the respondents based on their locality for their acceptance of SPVS. It is found that people with higher income levels are generally more open to the idea of adopting SPVS and people living in rented houses are less likely to adopt SPVS compared to those living in their own houses whether in urban or rural areas. The outcome of TOPSIS shows that the respondents with high income, residing in their own houses in urban areas are ranked first in the willingness to adopt SPVS. It is thus recommended that apart from providing subsidies for domestic SPVS, the government should also actively promote the idea of installing SPVS by house owners through popular media such as television and print and educate the domestic SPVS users about the long-term benefits of the same.