Solar PV drives down electricity market prices in Europe

Henri Gouzerh and Nicolas Gourvitch proposed a method to quantify the merit order effect of solar PV in Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland for the period 2007-2013.

They calculated the savings for power purchasers generated by the decrease in electricity spot market prices observed when solar PV plants feed electricity into the grid. The overall savings amounted to EUR 20 Bn across those five European countries for the 2007-2013 period, and were worth about 100 EUR per MWh of PV electricity fed into the grid, underlining the social value of the power generated by PV.

Henri Gouzerh and Nicolas Gourvitch presented this article on the 31ste European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition in Hamburg in September 2015.

They were selected as the winner of the Poster Award by the scientific committee in the thematic area of “PV – A major electricity source”.