Impacts of self-generation and self-consumption on German household electricity prices

Abstract

In recent years, more than half of the household PV systems in Germany were installed with battery storage systems to self-consume a higher share of the electricity produced. This development will have a large impact on the share of energy purchased from the electricity grid and this, in turn, will affect the distribution of the cost components of the household electricity price. This contribution therefore analyzes the impacts of increasing self-generation and self-consumption on the electricity price components. To obtain the nation-wide self-consumption potential, the results of a techno-economic optimization model on household system level are scaled up to all (semi-) detached houses in Germany. The additional PV feed-in remuneration and lacking contributions to the different taxes and levies are reallocated to the (remaining) electricity consumption from the grid. Changes in the regulatory framework, such as the abolishment of feed-in tariffs, a self-consumption charge, and different allocation schemes for the grid charges, are examined. The results indicate that under the current regulatory framework conditions, less than one third of the potential electricity price increase stems from self-consumption, while remuneration through feed-in tariffs has a much higher impact. Furthermore, the effects of self-consumption on the electricity price seem to be higher with capacity-based grid charges, because the contributions of PV storage owners to the grid charges are reduced through peak shaving with battery storage systems. Our findings also show that policy makers can strongly influence PV feed-in and self-consumption levels, as well as the resulting electricity price.