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European consortium highlights competitiveness of PV

The PV PARITY Project has concluded that grid parity is imminent in several countries. The European wide project bases its results on system prices, retail electricity prices, cost of financing, and capacity in countries to self-consume PV power generated.

Competitiveness in the residential sector in the target countries.

PV PARITY

The PV PARITY Project examined PV grid parity in residential, commerical and utility scale segments. The project consortium developed national competitiveness roadmaps for each segment in the target countries. The results show that grid parity is already "starting to be achieved" in Germany, Southern Italy, Netherlands and Spain this year. In the next two years, Northern Italy, Portugal and Austria should follow suit. Thereafter the other countries in Europe.

The different parameters that influence grid parity were analysed, such as competitiveness in residential and commercial/industrial segments which depend of other parameters like the retail electricity prices, system prices, cost of financing and the rate of self-consumption of electricity of each user.

For the residential segment, the dates when grid parity can be achieved vary widely between different target countries. This is due to irradiation differences, maturity of the exsiting PV markets and the retail electricity prices. Additionally PV investment as well as grid and life-cycle analysis will be examined.

The PV PARITY project is a joint effort of the following partners:

• Coordinator: WIP – Renewable Energies, Germany
• European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA)
• Vienna University of Technology (TUW), Austria
• Imperial College of London, United Kingdom
• Technical University of Crete, Greece
• ECN, Netherlands
• IDAE, Spain
• Gestore dei Servizi Energetici (GSE), Italy
• Stiftung Umweltenergierecht, Germany
• ENEL Green Power, Italy
• EDF Energies Nouvelles, France