Estimating national and local low-voltage grid capacity for residential solar photovoltaic in Sweden, UK and Germany
Journal article, 2021

The electric grid's available capacity to accommodate solar photovoltaic on national scales is currently uncertain. This makes decisions about grid capacity expansion, which can be very costly for local grid operators, difficult to make. Yet, knowledge of national solar photovoltaic grid capacity is central in order to formulate realistic solar PV targets and strategies. We present a methodology based on publicly available data to estimate the grid's hosting capacity of residential solar photovoltaic at both the national and local scale. The model is applied to Sweden, Germany and the UK and shows that low-voltage grid capacity for residential solar photovoltaic is very large, 33 (+5/-7) GW (Sweden), 248 (+5/-24) GW (Germany) and 63 (+1/-14) GW UK, and similar to current total generation capacity. Based on our estimations, we find that with the capacity of the present grid Sweden can supply 24%, Germany 60% and UK 21% of their current annual net electricity consumption from residential solar photovoltaic. In addition, we find that the grid-supported individual solar PV system sizes increase as population density decreases. Finally, our work highlights the importance of implementing sizing incentives for customers when installing their solar PV systems.

United Kingdom

Hosting capacity

Germany

Sweden

Residential solar PV

GIS

Author

Elias Hartvigsson

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Energy Technology

Mikael Odenberger

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Energy Technology

Peiyuan Chen

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Electric Power Engineering

Emil Nyholm

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Energy Technology

Renewable Energy

0960-1481 (ISSN) 18790682 (eISSN)

Vol. 171 915-926

Subject Categories

Transport Systems and Logistics

Energy Systems

Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.renene.2021.02.073

More information

Latest update

4/1/2021 1