A short survey on the effectiveness of some financial support programmes for pv-grid connected systems from an economic viewpoint

摘要

Currently, PV-grid connected systems (PVGCS) are the photovoltaic application with the greatest market growth. This is mainly due to a continuous decrease trend in PV cost and governmental support programmes launched by different countries, especially in Japan, Germany and the USA. In this paper it has been carried out a survey of the effectiveness of some financial support programmes from a strictly economic viewpoint, by means of profitability analysis. Several cases of PVGCS have been studied in different geographical areas, using classical analysis of investment projects for the estimation of the Internal Rate of Return of a PVGCS. The examined financial support programmes include production incentives (feed-in tariff, energy production payments, net metering and green pricing) and investment-focused incentives (initial investment subsidies or rebates and low-interest loans).Tax exemptions are not considered. The results show that the profitability in PVGCS may be achieved under some financing mechanisms. It stems from our analysis that the best measure consists of payment per kWh produced and sold for long time well above market prices (e.g. Feed-in tariff for 20 years). This survey considers most existing PV supporting measures and can be used for making decisions in planning PV support programmes in different geographical areas.