PV competitiveness and PV support schemes - Economic effects of rent seeking

In recent years, market shares of electricity generation from photovoltaics (PV) have been growing continuously. This boom in the PV market was mainly caused by previous and current support schemes, especially in Germany. As a result of that, significant cost decreases of the PV technology have been observed (technological learning). This leads to an increasing competitiveness of PV generation in comparison to remaining electricity generation technologies [1]. In some European countries current or in the next coming years in the residential and commercial/industry sector PV is competitiveness. PV competitiveness in this context means that the investment in a PV system is economic without any support schemes over the lifetime of the PV system. Despite this PV competitiveness in some European countries, policies strategies follow the funding of PV with different support schemes in the future. Most of these funding strategies guarantee a fixed remuneration of up to 20 years. Nowadays the PV industries ensure a module lifetime over 25 years and efficiency decreases at a maximum rate of up to 20% during 25 years. Also the inverter producers guarantee functionality of up to 25 years and in case of a converter exchange, this exchange is ensured and no additional costs incurred.