4. Results 4.1. Scenario 1: Base case financial analysis results Aside from determining whether installing any solar PV array at City College is financial feasible, our goal was also to examine the impact of existing rebates and incentives in making renewable energy projects in the Los Angeles region more financially appealing. The first simulation examined the financial performance of the four solar PV arrays given no incentives or rebates, considering only the current cost of electricity and parameters outlined in Tables 2 and 3. Table 5 below provides a summary of the financial results for the base case analysis. The Net Present Value (NPV) of solar PV array installations and operations sums the discounted cash flow outcomes of benefits and costs. In each simulation we ran, the NPV was negative, indicating that the proposed solar PV systems are not financially feasible from an investment standpoint. Similarly, the simple payback period of each scenario exceed 30 years, which is beyond the projected lifetime of each project. The Benefit Cost Ratio (BC) compares the proportion of benefits to costs of each solar PV array. Again, we find that each solar PV
installation has a BC ratio less than one, indicating a negative return. Calculating the Cost of Electricity (COE) provides some insight into the poor financial performances of solar PV arrays. In each case, the COE is approximately $0.25/kWh. While this is actually in the lower range of average solar PV COE values,18 it is still over twice as much as the current $0.10/kWh commercial rate charged by LADWP. Therefore it is evident that without additional financial incentive - subsidies or taxes - solar PV simply cannot compete with cheaper, fossil fuel generated energy