Development of an Integrated Web Tool for Assessing the Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint of the Photovoltaic Cycle: A New Perspective

This research develops an integrated web-based tool to manage and analyze photovoltaic (PV) systems. The tool combines sizing, energy payback time (EPBT) and carbon footprint calculation. The current tools address these tasks separately and for different purposes, which results in less efficient and more labor-intensive processes. The development included an analysis of the sizing and life cycle of PV systems, the creation of a database with technical characteristics of polycrystalline solar panels, data for energy and carbon footprint calculations, and user data storage. The equations for these calculations were programmed, and the tool was validated by comparative testing with six existing studies, demonstrating its efficiency in reducing time and effort. It was found that energy production is highly dependent on annual irradiance. Furthermore, manufacturing and transport were identified as the largest consumers of energy in the PV cycle.