Attractiveness of photovoltaic prosumerism in the European electricity market

Vartiainen, Eero (author), Breyer, Christian (author), Moser, David (author), Román Medina, Eduardo (author), Busto, Chiara (author), Topič, Marko (author), Mugnier, Daniel (author)

The current energy crisis calls for a rapid transition to renewables. Solar photovoltaics (PV) is the key component of the future energy system and a majority of PV systems are installed on rooftops in Europe. This article studies the business case of prosumers, i.e., consumers who produce part or all of their electricity with PV. The levelized cost of PV electricity is compared with the average value of PV electricity for the prosumers in residential, commercial, and industrial installations in Finland, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain with different self-consumption (SC) and weighted average cost of capital rates. Prosumer business cases are positive in every studied market segment and country, especially for industrial PV systems with 100% SC where a payback time of less than 4 years can be achieved. The sensitivity of payback time on key input parameters is also studied. Reasonable cost of capital and adequate SC of PV generation remain the key elements for attractive prosumerism.

• Language: English
• Keywords: photovoltaics, solar cell, electricity market, Prosumerism
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FE - Faculty of Electrical Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: 8 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 8, issue 1, art. 2300576
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-173581
• UDC: 621.383.51
• ISSN on article: 2367-198X
• DOI: 10.1002/solr.202300576
• COBISS.SI-ID: 181751811
• Publication date in RUL: 18.09.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Solar RRL
• Publisher: WILEY-VCH
• ISSN: 2367-198X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 11745620

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: fotovoltaika, sončna celica, trg električne energije

Projects

• Funder: EC - European Commission
• Name: European Technology and Innovation Platform for Photovoltaics
• Acronym: ETIP PV