Relationships between the Number and Power of Hungarian Household-Sized Photovoltaic Power Plants and Selected Indicators of the Settlements: A Case Study.

In the global transformation of energy systems, solar energy plays a prominent role, since the energy from our star is a limitless and clean resource, which is available practically almost everywhere. In spite of the immense advancements of photovoltaic systems, which utilize this source of energy, no in-depth research has been carried out regarding the present Hungarian status of the small-scale photovoltaic power plants, the most common type of solar power plant in Hungary. The novelty of this study is that it examines the number and power of these small-scale power plants at the settlement level within the service areas of the various distribution companies, by also considering the economic and infrastructural dimensions of the settlements. The paper seeks answers to the questions whether there are any significant relationships between the number and the power of power plants of this type and the indicators of the settlements, and if so, how strong they are. Besides pairwise correlations, the study also involved the analysis of the relationship between the ranking of the settlements based on the settlements' complex indicators that were created from the settlements' indicators and the ranking of the settlements according to the number and power of household-sized photovoltaic power plants per 1000 people. In the course of exploring the relationships, a regression model was also devised concerning the number of household-sized photovoltaic power plants and the settlement indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]