Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PV-Prosumers4Grid (Development of innovative self-consumption and aggregation concepts for PV Prosumers to improve grid load and increase market value of PV)

Teaser

Europe´s electricity sector is in the midst of major transformation moving from public monopolies into competitive private companies in liberalized markets. The liberalization of the market is expected to deliver more competitive and therefore more efficient and cheaper...

Summary

Europe´s electricity sector is in the midst of major transformation moving from public monopolies into competitive private companies in liberalized markets. The liberalization of the market is expected to deliver more competitive and therefore more efficient and cheaper energy. Due to its cost and growth perspective, photovoltaics (PV) will be a key driver of this development throughout Europe because PV has reached a level of competitiveness that allows moving to self-consumption schemes in many European countries and eventually to peer-to-peer selling of the self-produced energy.

Such a “prosumption” role empowers consumers to participate actively in the electricity market by producing energy themselves. Additionally, technical developments such as battery systems or smart meters, and advanced business models promoting self-consumption change the technical design of the electricity systems. The success of these developments depends, however, on the regulatory and administrative framework in terms of energy policy and regulation, grid financing, taxation and legal relationships amongst the involved entities and it requires innovative solutions coupled with suitable business and management models to achieve sustainable system integration. Consequently, with the rapid growth of the share of electricity produced by variable renewable sources, especially by PV, innovative business and management concepts for private and commercial prosumers are a key element to facilitate PV market and system integration (PVP4Grid concepts).

The main objective of the PV-Prosumers4Grid (PVP4Grid) project is the improvement and replicability of such innovative business and management concepts (PVP4Grid concepts) for PV prosumers considering technical and economic grid issues. With a strong involvement of all relevant key stakeholders for self-consumption, with an effective validation of the business and management concepts and with tailor-made recommendations derived on national and European level, this project will positively influence the overall regulatory and market conditions in the longer-term.

The specific objectives to be achieved by the end of the PVP4Grid project are:
• Identification of the PV prosumer potential and its impacts on different system environments: since the contribution of PV prosumers to the national energy transitions in Europe is still low, the share of prosumer PV must be increased significantly. An assessment on the market potential will identify the most appropriate application segments for such an increase in urban and rural areas as well as its impacts on typical grid environments. The analysis will include an assessment of free grid capacity for absorbing prosumer PV in urban areas.
• Identification of barriers for and improvement of the role of PV prosumers: the PVP4Grid project will systematically analyse existing national and European regulatory and market conditions for PV prosumers and will develop optimized concepts of PV prosumers for grid connection and in electricity markets. The conditions will be considered from a prosumer, from a grid operator and from a policy maker perspective. The latter is related to the load balancing and financing of the grids in systems with high PV penetration.
• Validation of innovative business and management concepts (PVP4Grid concepts) for PV prosumers: the testing of new innovative PVP4Grid concepts in real-life environments (using data from already available self-consumption systems) or by using specific modelling tools, depending on market conditions, will lead to an extensive network of demonstration projects that contribute to European energy market research and development.
• Replicability and recommendations: special attention is given to possibilities of up-scaling and replicating the innovative PV solutions and to their transferability across the European Union. This will ensure that the project results will directly result in tailor-made recommenda

Work performed

Within the 1st reporting period the following activities were performed:

- Quantitative analysis of the PV prosumer market potential with focus on home owners, landlords, housing cooperatives, commerce, retail, services, and with 2nd priority industry and real estate companies. Qualitative assessment of technical benefits, grid environments, market options and barriers for PV prosumer business models and distortions for market-compatible PV market integration.

- Identification of existing management and business models for PVP4Grid concepts and improvement of these concepts by taking the interdependence with different market frameworks into account. For this the project concept approach features an in-depth analysis of the PV competitiveness of the implementation of the developed improved PVP4Grid concepts into European electricity markets by means of implementation scenarios for different market design.

- Investigation of the market readiness of PVP4Grid concepts with real-life testing for market implementation with an increased level of renewable energy shares.

The achieved results of the PVP4Grid project include:
• Analysis of the PV self-consumption models: through the identification of the potential and the barriers (objective)
• Improvement of PV prosumer models for the grid infrastructure: through the validation of PVP4Grid concepts (objective)

Final results

The expected results of the PVP4Grid project include:
• Analysis of the PV self-consumption models: through the identification of the potential and the barriers (achieved)
• Improvement of PV prosumer models for the grid infrastructure: through the validation of PVP4Grid concepts (achieved)
• Testing PVP4Grid concepts: through the validation of PVP4Grid concepts (expected)
• Recommendations for PVP4Grid concepts implementation at national and European level (expected)


The PVP4Grid project aims to achieve the following impact:
Market Transformation: (Expected impact according to the work programme: “increase the share of renewable energy in the future energy mix”)
• Successful implementation of PVP4Grid concepts
• Technical value of PVP4Grid concepts for system integration of PV
Policy: (Expected impact according to the work programme: Better market understanding for possible policy and regulatory development)
• DSO and TSO ancillary service adaptations
• Market design and regulatory frameworks
• Development of policy recommendations
Socio-economics / Environment: (Expected impact according to the work programme: “Increase of public acceptance for renewables”)
• Public acceptance due to full market integration of PV with lower or no support
• Public acceptance due to grid operation support by successful PVP4Grid concepts integration
Replicability: (Expected impact according to the work programme: “increase the share of renewable energy in the future energy mix”)
• Replication of PVP4Grid concepts

Website & more info

More info: https://www.pvp4grid.eu/.