Solar Commercial Virtual Power Plant

Installed photo voltaic energy grew exponentially during the last decade. One of the driving forces was the often generous governmental support. In Belgium (Flanders) for example, investors could acquire green power certificates worth €450/MWh during several years. However, due to the large boom of solar plants and hence rising subsidy cost, governments are dropping this support (eg. €450/MWh in 2009 to €90/MWh in 2012 for Flanders). In this paper the authors investigate if solar energy can become more profitable if forces are joined in a Commercial Virtual Power Plant to sell the solar power on the wholesale market. The numbers are based on the Flemish region, however, the same procedure can be applied to other markets as well. It turned out that for existing installations the potential benefits are marginal due to the small share of the energy revenue compared to the subsidy revenue in the total income of a solar plant. However, lower subsidies and coupling with other production resources and (flexible) consumers promise to be more profitable, although this needs more investigation.