Solar rebound: Does PV help to decarbonize the house?
Abstract:
In the recent years, many households have invested in solar photovoltaics panels and have become prosumers. It is now well documented that solar households increase their electricity consumption after they installed the panels, a classical example of a rebound effect.This solar rebound is driven by a change in the electricity price relative to the other energy prices, a substitution effect and an increase in the available income.Then the fall in power drawn from the network is not as great as anticipated from the total installed PV capacity.
But little is known on the drivers of this increase in electricity consumption. Do solar households buy new power-hungry appliances or do they substitute other energy sources (gas, fuel oil) for electricity. In this paper, we make a first step in that direction by looking at the substitution between gas and electricity. Solar households might stop using natural gas for cooking, domestic hot water or heating, employing instead an induction cooktop, a microwave oven, a kettle or a radiator.
We are leveraging prosumers’ billing data for both power and natural gas to give a tentative answer regarding this degree of substitution. For that task, we use the consumption data provided by RESA, the major distribution system operator (DSO) for the Liège area in the Walloon region of Belgium; we sub-select the about 12,000 clients who have installed solar PV and also hold a connection to the natural gas network. We use these data to test for an electric solar rebound and a gas solar rebound.
About Alex Gautier:
Axel Gautier is professor of economics at HEC Liège, University of Liège. He is doing research in industrial organization with applications to digital platforms and energy markets.
Language: English
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