Solar Self-Consumption Under Different Regulatory Regimes: System-Friendliness and Economic Feasibility

Kurzfassung

The decreasing costs of solar photovoltaic systems and storage along with the decline of feed in tariffs and increase in electricity retail prices has increased the appeal of solar self-consumption. Consumers now not only consume electricity but also store and feed into the grid. This development changes the nature of the relationship between consumers and the utilities. Under the current market structure, it risks exacerbate the issue of utility death spiral due to the volumetric nature of pricing. Furthermore, exposing consumers to only fixed electricity prices, incentivises them to operate their storage systems in a non-ideal fashion from a system point of view, thus further incurring costs on the system, along with creating economic inefficiencies in the system. In this thesis, the prospect of solar self consumption is investigated under various regulatory regimes and tariff structures in Germany in order to investigate the potential impact these regimes might have on the self consumption profitability and on system friendliness.