Achieving rapid transformation of utility resource portfolios by developing markets for utility strategic PV

Abstract

When solar PV is strategically deployed by utilities, considering issues of location, scale, orientation, and operation, it can often be cost-effective today. This opens a vast new market channel for PV. Moreover, PV can play a key role in driving utilities to design strong, mixed resource portfolios, including numerous renewables, demand-side measures, a declining measure of conventional resources, and infrastructure components, in which each is used more efficiently and synergistically. A variety of market and policy approaches, including enhanced renewable portfolio standards, can unleash PV's potential to hasten this transformation of the utility industry. This paper discusses market and policy approaches currently being developed or tested in the U.S., and it discusses worldwide implications.