• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
• /
• v.16 no.6
• /
• pp.587-594
• /
• 2016

This study aims to analyze the benefit-cost of the cleaning device for photovoltaic power generation systems in buildings in order to check its economic feasibility. A product, which has similar characteristics to the ultrasound-based cleaning device and is widely used in South Korea, was selected to compare with the benefit-cost value of the ultrasound-based cleaning device in this study. In order to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze benefit and cost aspects of the two products, categories and evaluation factors of each aspect as well as evaluation criteria were identified. Based on the identified evaluation factors and criteria, this study conducted face-to-face interviews with 15 experts to measure weights of benefit and cost aspects of the products. As the results, the total benefit weight of the ultrasound-based cleaning device was larger than its total cost weight since the benefit-cost value was greater than 1, which was 1.6 times of that of to compared product. Therefore, from the economic perspective, it is worth to develop the cleaning device for photovoltaic power generation systems applying ultrasound technology.