The impact of grid pricing and support policies on the development of PV self-consumption.

Summary For the past ten years, the public authorities have supported the photovoltaic industry in order to meet the objectives of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The support policies implemented have resulted in an unprecedented development of this sector, leading to a significant drop in production costs. The decrease has been so significant that, in many countries, photovoltaic production costs are lower than the retail price of electricity. Households are now encouraged to invest in a photovoltaic power plant in order to consume part of their own electricity. This so-called self-consumption phenomenon depends largely on the structure of the grid tariff. Currently, this tariff is mainly based on the energy drawn without time differentiation. This type of tariff does not reflect the costs of the electricity network operators, which are essentially fixed in the short and medium term. The decrease in revenue induced by self-consumption creates a deficit for the grid operators which must be covered by an increase in the grid tariff. This effect leads to cross-subsidies from standard consumers to self-consumers. The objective of this thesis is to address this issue and it consists of 4 chapters. In the first chapter, an analysis of support policies for self-consumption has been carried out for the following countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Spain and France. This study is based on bibliographic and documentary research in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of these policies. In the second chapter, we study the indirect costs of the development of self-consumption for consumers. For this purpose, an estimate of cross-subsidies in France between 2017 and 2021 is proposed. This estimate is based on the calculation of aggregated self-consumption volumes at the national level, based on the reconstitution of load curves for different consumer and company profiles. In chapter 3, the current support mechanism is evaluated according to two criteria: the revenues generated by self-consumption and the support costs for the community. A simulation model has been developed to determine the profitability of a PV installation coupled with a battery under different network tariffs. In chapter 4, an estimation of the gains related to load shedding is performed. A battery charging optimization model has been developed to maximize the revenue from load shedding for the self-consumer.The thesis shows that policies to support self-consumption have neglected the indirect costs associated with network tariffs. Changes in the structure of the grid tariff are needed to limit cross-subsidies on the one hand, and to take advantage of the benefits that self-consumption can bring to the grid or to the power system in general on the other. Tariff signals are needed to increase the value of self-consumption, but this can only be achieved by changing the current subsidy scheme, which does not encourage the adoption of batteries. The results show that a premium for battery investment would be less costly for the community but would limit the development of self-consumption.