Life Cycle Assessment of a photovoltaic plant

This thesis born from the idea and interest to develop in an extent way the knowledge acquired during the master’s degree of Energy Engineering, especially with the topic of applied energy and solar photovoltaic renewable energy. The way to change from fossil fuel energy to environmentally friendly energy is the way for reducing the greenhouse gases emissions. Nowadays, there is a big demand for clean energy. When plant exploiting is installed, they have the objective to achieve zero harmful emissions but the manufacturing process of their components must be taken into account along with its construction. This master’s thesis presents and studies the analysis of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a real photovoltaic plant existing in Italy by using SimaPro software. Before starting to write the thesis, it is done research of previous studies and papers of the topic of interest as well as a reading of the most interesting ones. In the first part, it is explained the LCA analysis with a description of its methodology and an explanation of all its phases and steps, as well as an explanation of the main software and methodologies that will be used in the practical analysis. In the second part, it is described the real photovoltaic plant that will be analysed with the description of all components. The analysis is carried out on a photovoltaic plant called Acquaviva 02, located in the town of Acquaviva delle Fonti, in the region of Puglia (Italy). The owner of the plant is Espe Rinnovabili SRL. In the third part, a LCA analysis is done for Acquaviva 02 photovoltaic plant taking into account all the steps shown in the first section and the elements described in the second part. Finally, it is done a LCA comparison between the real photovoltaic plant and a photovoltaic plant found in the database of SimaPro, highlighting the main differences and comparing and contrasting both results.