Improving the Competitiveness of Solar PV with Electricity Storage

Solar photovoltaics (PV) is becoming the cheapest form of electricity generation in many sunny countries around the world. In some European countries with moderate annual solar irradiation, true competitiveness of solar PV has not yet been reached in all market segments. However, this competitiveness might be enhanced by using electricity storage. The challenge for PV generation is that it does not always match the electricity consumption. Especially in residential PV installations, a large share of the self-produced solar electricity cannot be immediately consumed locally, and is fed to the grid with very low remuneration. With storage, the share of PV self-consumption can be increased which could lead to a better business case for the prosumer. Currently, the average price of battery storage is still too high in most cases to make a PV system with storage competitive against PV without storage. However, in countries with high retail electricity price, like Italy and Germany, PV with storage is already becoming competitive. The continuing cost decrease of battery storage will soon make it a feasible option in more countries and will allow a higher share of PV generation in the energy system.