Rooftop PV reaches grid parity in EU

From PV Magazine:

If all the rooftops across the European Union able to host solar arrays did so, 680 TWh could be generated, providing 24.4% of the political bloc’s current electricity consumption.

That is the chief finding of a paper entitled A high-resolution geospatial assessment of the rooftop solar photovoltaic potential in the European Union, published on the ScienceDirect website.

The authors of the study combined geospatial and statistical data to assess the technical potential of rooftops for solar energy deployment on every building in the EU. The model, which also used machine learning, was used to quantify the total available rooftop surface for PV systems.

The methodology helped the researchers identify EU markets where rooftop PV could generate electricity at a very competitive levelized cost of energy.

“Specific countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain stand out in the maps as they host the highest economic potential that translates to more options for advantageous investments,” stated the paper, adding, electricity retail prices of €0.30-0.169/kWh meant rooftop solar could offer electricity savings of 49% in Germany, 44% in Spain, 42% in Italy and 23% in France.

Eastern EU member states such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Estonia, however, were cited as markets with very low retail electricity prices, of €0.095-0.12/kWh.

The rooftop PV analysis identified nine markets where grid-parity is some way off as a result of cheap grid power and all of them are in Eastern Europe: Romania, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

By contrast, Portugal was highlighted as a market with very favorable conditions, including high solar radiation, good financing availability and high retail electricity prices of around €0.22/kWh.

[Read more here]

Remember that rooftop solar is more expensive than industrial- or utility-scale solar because of economies of scale, and because utility-scale solar can use variable-tilt/tracking solar panels which increase yield by 20% or so, plus produce a "squarer" output profile than fixed-tilt solar because they shift to face the sun during the course of the day.   On the other hand, the price point is also higher, being offset against the retail not the wholesale cost of electricity. 

I have already looked at how onshore wind could provide ten times Europe's electricity needs, and how offshore wind could power all of NE Europe.  Rooftop PV could provide 25%, and large-scale PV even more.  There'll be no shortage of electricity even in a 100% green Europe. 

As can be seen from the map above, it would prolly make sense to put Europe's solar farms in Spain, North Africa, the south of France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and SE Europe, where solar resources are greater.   The offsetting cost would be the construction of HVDC (high-voltage direct current) interconnectors between these regions and northern Europe.  Rooftop solar doesn't have that problem, because it's located right next to the demand for electricity.