The conclusions of a PVPS special information activity to assess PV 'added values' are to be published as a new report.

Following on from the focus workshops held in Sapporo, Japan in 1999, and Glasgow, UK last year, a summary report documenting the Added Values of Photovoltaic Power Systems has been prepared under IEA  PVPS Task 1 (Information Dissemination), with support from IEA  PVPSTask 7 (PV in the Built Environment).

PV is increasingly accepted as an economically viable energy supply technology for a wide variety of - mostly off-grid - applications. Photovoltaics can provide high-value service or amenity wherever low-maintenance, reliability, easy of deployment or relatively small power demand are important factors. For grid-connected applications in particular, though, viability assessments continue to be made largely on the basis of electricity cost, which despite consistent reductions over the past three decades, typically remain higher than those available from centralized fossil fuel or nuclear plants, or even retail electricity prices.

As the report details, however, even in grid supplied areas, values other than kWh energy cost are important. For utilities these include ancillary services, such as power quality and reliability, and capacity values.

For customers and society in general reliability, environmental impact, convenience, supply security and associated employment are important issues. In the built environment, there are other non-energy values to consider, such as avoided land and structure costs, architectural interest and multi-functionality. Present arrangements for ancillary services and network augmentation or extension continue to focus on the larger participants in the electricity market and distributed options like PV do not yet receive equal consideration. Additionally, electricity industry regulation with respect to climate change is still in its infancy, so that little value is placed on emission-free generation. The study summarizes the key barriers which are currently hampering increased PV power system utilization, and proposes measures to overcome these.

Although the report does not attempt to quantify all the values in a form, which could be used for cost/benefit analysis, documenting the various added-values is an important first step towards this. Copies of the report, IEA  PVPS T1-09:2001, are available from Task 1 National contacts or you can download this report as PDF file (406 kB) now.

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