Entrepreneurship, sustainability, and solar distributed generation

The issues associated with the generation of own electric power by consumers who install solar photovoltaic (PV) panels (known as solar distributed generation, or DG), attracts rapidly growing attention of both policy-makers, regulators and the members of the general public.Distributed generation (DG) comes with a lot of benefits: being the most sustainable, cleanest source of energy, solar products facilitates local priorities, such as economic growth, internal security, mitigation against climate change, and employment opportunities.However, there is another side of the coin: despite the rapid success of solar DG, it is still faced with a plethora of issues and challenges.An increase in the rooftop solar PV in might results in a transfer of wealth and costs between customer groups.There are elderly, disabled and chronically sick citizens who cannot benefit from generating their own electric power using solar PV panels, but who might still face higher electricity bills due to the higher policy support charges (levies) and taxes aimed at supporting decarbonisation through distributed generation.Overall, it appears that current network charging regime is likely to be unfit in the presence of solar PV households who do not contribute to the grid as they should be.