Photovoltaic Incentive Design Handbook

Hoff, T. E.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (U.S.)

关键词: Incentive Programs;    Manuals;    Customers;    Utilities;    Solar;   

DOI  :  10.2172/897437
RP-ID  :  NREL/SR-640-40845
RP-ID  :  AC36-99-GO10337
RP-ID  :  897437

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

Investments in customer-owned grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) energy systems are growing at a steady pace. This is due, in part, to the availability of attractive economic incentives offered by public state agencies and utilities. In the United States, these incentives have largely been upfront lump payments tied to the system capacity rating. While capacity-based ''buydowns'' have stimulated the domestic PV market, they have been criticized for subsidizing systems with potentially poor energy performance. As a result, the industry has been forced to consider alternative incentive structures, particularly ones that pay based on long-term measured performance. The industry, however, lacks consensus in the debate over the tradeoffs between upfront incentive payments versus longer-term payments for energy delivery. This handbook is designed for agencies and utilities that offer or intend to offer incentive programs for customer-owned PV systems. Its purpose is to help select, design, and implement incentive programs that best meet programmatic goals. The handbook begins with a discussion of the various available incentive structures and then provides qualitative and quantitative tools necessary to design the most appropriate incentive structure. It concludes with program administration considerations.