Techno-Economic Analysis of Off-Grid Pole-Mounted Photovoltaic Configurations for Accessible and Inaccessible Sites in Arid Climates

This paper presents an integrated techno-economic synthesis for selecting pole-mounted off-grid photovoltaic configurations, consolidating six experimental and analytical studies into a unified multicriteria decision framework. The analysis is grounded in a one-year high-resolution outdoor experimentation (Aug. 25, 2025 – Aug. 24, 2026) at the QEERI Outdoor Test Facility in Doha, Qatar, complemented by validated analytical models addressing environmental and structural constraints. Five configurations U-IBC 22°, bifacial 22°, U-IBC vertical, bifacial vertical, and an octagonal Vertical Photovoltaic Tube are evaluated for accessible sites with periodic maintenance and inaccessible sites exposed to long-term environmental constraints. A six-criterion composite framework integrates capital efficiency, land-use efficiency, battery storage requirement, soiling and maintenance burden, shading resilience, and structural compactness. Three dimensionless penalty indices for accessibility, shading, and structural impact, along with a compound index, quantify the impacts of real-world constraints. The results reveal a resource–constraint duality: bifacial 22° modules marginally minimize installed capacity under ideal accessible conditions, whereas the Vertical Photovoltaic Tube performs better under constrained scenarios. The accessibility penalty decreases from + 26.90% for tilted configurations to + 1.07% for the Vertical Photovoltaic Tube, representing a 25-fold advantage, while the compound penalty decreases from + 280.7% to + 34.8% under simultaneous zero-access soiling and 50% shading conditions. Above 67% shading, all planar configurations reach complete power-production outage, whereas the Vertical Photovoltaic Tube remains operable. The proposed framework shifts PV system selection from single-metric optimization toward constraint-driven decision-making.