Energy Business Initiatives for Grid-Connected Solar Photovoltaic Systems: An Overview

Abstract

An overview of the adoption extent of the energy business models around the world was undertaken by considering both the developed and developing countries, with the emphasis on the customer-side renewable energy business models. The developed countries have widely adopted energy business initiatives to advance the distributed generation of electricity from renewable energy sources, while developing countries are struggling and/or have failed to record significant success. Additionally, developing countries are shifting from customer-owned energy business initiatives to the community-shared energy business initiatives to enhance prosumer-generated energy self-consumption. Furthermore, the existent billing schemes as well as the store-on grid scheme applicable to the energy business initiatives are discussed in this paper. The virtual net metering scheme category is the main billing scheme used for the community-shared energy business initiatives. In addition, this study depicts how the store-on grid scheme addresses the shortfalls of the existent billing schemes. Finally, the study gives policy recommendations that the decision makers in the developing countries could use as a foundation to foster the solar PV technology deployment through energy business models, especially by the adoption of the store-on grid scheme as the billing scheme.