ASSESSMENT OF PV INVESTMENTS IN NORTHERN CYPRUS Loiy Al-Ghussain 1 , Mohammad Abujubbeh 1 , Murat Fahrioglu 2 1 Sustainable Environment and Energy Systems, Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus, Kalkanli, Guzelyurt via Mersin 10, 99738, Turkey 2 Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus, Kalkanli, Guzelyurt via Mersin 10, 99738, Turkey Corresponding author: Mohammad Abujubbeh, e-mail: mohammad.abujubbeh@metu.edu.tr REFERENCE NO ABSTRACT ECON-01 Energy is one of the most important merchandises in the whole world as it is considered as the engine for the economic growth and development of the countries. The investment in renewable energy systems became one of the successful investments as the demand on energy is increasing significantly. However, the profitability of renewable energy systems highly depends on the geographical location. Northern Cyprus is poor in traditional energy resources and the power generation system depends on imported fossil fuel. On the other hand, Northern Cyprus has high potential of solar energy which makes it a suitable place for PV projects. Therefore, this study aims to specify the best regions in Northern Cyprus to install PV power plants where the best regions are selected based on the highest profitability of the project. The simulation results indicate that the investment in PV projects in all the regions is profitable if the feed in tariff was the same as Southern Cyprus, i.e. 0.294 USD/kWh. Guzelyurt is the best region for PV investments in Northern Cyprus with NPV of 3256.1 USD/kWp, LCOE of 0.1035 USD/kWh, IRR of 31.77% and a PBP of 6.1 years. Keywords: Energy Economics, PV investments, Solar Resources, PVGIS Software, Northern Cyprus 1. INTRODUCTION Energy is one of the essential factors for the development of societies through life quality enhancement. However, the conditions in energy sectors are changing as the demand is rapidly increasing. This stress on energy demand has induced a big burden on conventional energy resources. With the recent attention to climate change and environmental issues with fossil-fuel based energy production, governments and utilities are becoming motivated to increase renewable energy penetration into electric grids [1]. Photovoltaic (PV) power is an important sustainable energy resource. Projections show that the usage of PV technology is expected to be the highest among all other types of renewable energy resources by 2030 [2] due to the extreme decline in its installation prices [3] .Therefore, countries characterized with high potential of solar irradiation commenced PV projects all around the globe to enhance the sustainable development of energy sectors. Despite the fact that Northern Cyprus heavily depends on imported fossil fuel based energy resources [4], the island is well known for its high potential of solar irradiation availability [5] where it is characterized to have 300 sunny days in a year [6]. Hence, it is a major motivation for utilities and government to increase the investment in PV projects in the island in order to fasten the movement towards clean energy usage and higher profitability gains to investors. Various studies in literature discuss the installation of PV plants in Northern Cyprus. For instance, authors in [6] found that having 6.81 MW off-grid PV power plant with batteries would meet the demand of the university; however, the cost of electricity generated was 0.24 USD/kWh where the grid tariff was 0.22 USD/kWh, while having a 5.875 MW grid-tied PV plant with feed in tariff of 0.22 USD/kWh would reduce the cost of electricity to 0.14 USD/kWh. Furthermore, authors in study [7] determined the feasibility of different sizes of grid-tied PV power plants in Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus with energy storage system; having a 4.5 MW PV plant with 15 MWh PHS would meet the demand 83% of the time and have LCOE of 0.24 USD/kWh; where the 16 th International Conference on Clean Energy (ICCE-2018) 9-11 May 2018, Famagusta, N. Cyprus