Modeling investment choices: The case of roof-top solar photovoltaics in Germany

Kurzfassung

We examine home owner investments in solar photovoltaics (PV). PV adoption can be regarded as an example of life decisions, as those investments require a considerable amount of temporal and financial commitment. We give a fundamental interpretation for the absolute level of monthly solar photovoltaics installations and will show how our proposed modeling mechanism relates to discrete choice approaches. Evidence is found that the investment behavior changed over time, namely that the mean hurdle rate of house owners for adopting PV has decreased. Understanding the investment dynamics of emerging energy technologies like photovoltaics will help policy makers to adjust the level of incentives like feed-in tariffs to reach desired deployment goals. The research results will be used to expand an agent-based model built to investigate the integration of renewable energy sources into the German electricity market.