Prosumer standby fee design: Solving the inequity problem of China's county-wide photovoltaic project promotion

Abstract

To achieve the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, China promoted county-wide photovoltaic projects (CWPVs) in 2021. A large number of distributed photovoltaic (DPV) installations have expanded the scale of prosumer. It also brings the inequity problem of prosumer, distribution network system operator (DSO) and consumer--DSO and consumer bear the costs such as access cost and depreciation of stock investment caused by DPV access. Combined with China's current electricity tariff system and the promotion of photovoltaic scale development, this paper proposes a standby fee model based on the principle of “beneficiary apportionment”. In this model, the standby fee mechanism for self-owned power plants is applied to DPV to reduce the implementation cost of the mechanism, and the principle of “beneficiary apportionment” is adopted to ensure the profitability of DPV. This paper takes the CWPV in Hunan Province, China as an example, calculates the standby fee under various electricity metering methods, and determines the most appropriate standby fee by considering factors such as output uncertainty of DPV. Finally, the difficulties in the implementation of standby fee are sorted out.