Development of Rooftop Solar under Netbilling in Chile: Analysis of Main Barriers from Project Developers’ Perspectives

Abstract

The development of rooftop solar PV generation has significant potential to generate enormous benefits to the electricity systems in achieving emission reduction targets and meeting increasing global energy demand, but could also make the power systems more resilient and affordable. In 2012, the Chilean government introduced a net billing law (Law 20.517) to incentivize consumers to sell their excess renewable electricity into the grid, which was expected to lead to a significant growth in rooftop solar. However, to date, the advancement of these technologies in the country has been very limited due to various barriers. For this reason, identifying and mitigating the main barriers that impede the advancement of development of rooftop solar is necessary to allow the successful deployment of these technologies. Based on data collected from a questionnaire survey and interviews conducted among the project developers in rooftop solar, the authors identify and rank the major barriers to the adoption of these technologies in Chile. Our findings show that the most significant barriers include “high investment and recovery period for the customer”, “lack of incentives to develop projects in the sector”, “rigid regulations regarding project size”, and “long administrative process and grid connection costs”. Furthermore, we discuss the most critical barriers in detail together with policy recommendations to overcome them.

A Diffuse Analysis Based on Analytical Processes to Prioritize Barriers in the Development of Renewable Energy Technologies in Alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Evidence from Guajira/Colombia

“…Renewable energy sources are inherently unstable, which is the main reason why they are not widely used, existing renewable electricity distribution networks compensate for this situation with fossil fuel or uranium-based installations and implementation to secure and guarantee supply (Isah et al, 2023). As long as the share This Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License of renewables in an electricity market represents around 20-30% of the total, the additional costs of the system to compensate for consumption are generally acceptable, especially to avoid energy cuts and thus favour CO2 reduction and fuel imports are considered uneconomic (Nasirov et al, 2023). However, if renewables contribute most of the energy to the grid, other measures are needed to ensure supply when there is no wind and on cloudy days when there is no solar radiation, to give these two examples (Bax et al, 2023) Considering the above situation, the countries of the European Community usually use the exchange of electricity between countries to balance the difference in resources and renewable generation between localities or regions; For example, in the particular case of Spain, this choice is very limited due to the size of its energy links with France, which makes it a true energy island (Carolli et al, 2022).…”

“…they are accompanied by a low energy density, so the capture of significant amounts of energy implies the occupation of large areas of land, especially in the case of photovoltaic and wind solar energy (Haykir et al, 2023). To give an example, in relation to wind energy, several of the problems caused by the massive use of this energy source are derived from its operating principles, for a better understanding of this idea regarding wind energy, high ground is ideal to install this technology (Nuñez-Jimenez et al, 2023), but they are highly criticized from the point of view of the environment, since large equipment causes great visual impacts, in addition to sometimes altering in a very appreciable way the life of the local fauna. Therefore, the use of renewable energies is a measure that benefits the environment and society, since it contributes to the fight against climate change and the protection of the planet (Ejeh et al, 2023).…”