Electricity Bill Savings from Residential Photovoltaic Systems: Sensitivities to Changes in Future Electricity Market Conditions

Technical Report · Wed Jan 09 04:00:00 EST 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1168592· OSTI ID:1168592

Darghouth, Naim ^[1]; Barbose, Galen ^[1]; Wiser, Ryan ^[1]

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1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Environmental Energy Technologies Division

Customer-sited photovoltaic (PV) systems in the United States are often compensated at the customer’s underlying retail electricity rate through net metering. Calculations of the customer economics of PV, meanwhile, often assume that retail rate structures and PV compensation mechanisms will not change and that retail electricity prices will increase (or remain constant) over time, thereby also increasing (or keeping constant) the value of bill savings from PV. Given the multitude of potential changes to retail rates and PV compensation mechanisms in the future, however, understanding how such changes might impact the value of bill savings from PV is critical for policymakers, regulators, utilities, the solar industry, and potential PV owners, i.e., any stakeholder interested in understanding uncertainties in and potential changes to the long-term customer economics of PV. This scoping study investigates the impact of, and interactions among, three key sources of uncertainty in the future value of bill savings from customer-sited PV, focusing in particular on residential customers. These three sources of uncertainty are: changes to electricity market conditions that would affect retail electricity prices, changes to the types of retail rate structures available to residential customers with PV, and shifts away from standard net-metering toward other compensation mechanisms for residential PV.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S); USDOE Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE). National Electricity Delivery Division
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 1168592
• Report Number(s): LBNL--6017E
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION