Profitability in absence of subsidies: A techno-economic analysis of rooftop photovoltaic self-consumption in residential and commercial buildings

Abstract

In the face of fading regulatory support for the deployment of photovoltaics (PV), self-consumption models for photovoltaics on buildings present an option to decouple economic performance from policy support such as feed-in tariffs. Through a techno-economic analysis we analyze the potential of PV self-consumption for four different building types (residential and commercial, each large and small) in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. We find that with self-consumption rooftop PV can be attractive for many buildings in central Europe already today, even in the absence of regulatory support. Main profitability drivers include electricity prices and the achievable self-consumption share of a building (driven, in turn, by the building-specific ratio of PV power production and electricity demand, and the timely overlap of production and the consumption curve). We complement our techno-economic analysis of rooftop PV with a discussion of diffusion barriers, i.e., mechanisms that hinder market adoption despite cost-effectiveness, such as split incentives and risk and uncertainty. We formulate recommendations for the deployment of rooftop PV for business and policy makers.