Estimating national and local low-voltage grid capacity for residential solar photovoltaic in Sweden, UK and Germany
Open accessAbstract
The electric grid’s available capacity to accommodate solar photovoltaic on national scales is currently uncertain. This makes decisions about grid capacity expansion, which can be very costly for local grid operators, difficult to make. Yet, knowledge of national solar photovoltaic grid capacity is central in order to formulate realistic solar PV targets and strategies. We present a methodology based on publicly available data to estimate the grid’s hosting capacity of residential solar photovoltaic at both the national and local scale. The model is applied to Sweden, Germany and the UK and shows that low-voltage grid capacity for residential solar photovoltaic is very large, 33 (+5/-7) GW (Sweden), 248 (+5/-24) GW (Germany) and 63 (+1/-14) GW UK, and similar to current total generation capacity. Based on our estimations, we find that with the capacity of the present grid Sweden can supply 24%, Germany 60% and UK 21% of their current annual net electricity consumption from residential solar photovoltaic. In addition, we find that the grid-supported individual solar PV system sizes increase as population density decreases. Finally, our work highlights the importance of implementing sizing incentives for customers when installing their solar PV systems.
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The theoretical low-voltage grids have been compared to real data [41].
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From A large-scale high-resolution geographic analysis of impacts of electric vehicle charging on low-voltage grids (2022) · cites this paper as [41]
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Umoh, V., Davidson, I., Adebiyi, A., & Ekpe, U. (2023) · Energies · doi:10.3390/en16083609 · Cited by 71 · see citing works
Hartvigsson, E., Taljegard, M., Odenberger, M., & Chen, P. (2022) · Energy · doi:10.1016/j.energy.2022.125180 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Hartvigsson, E., Odenberger, M., Chen, P., & Nyholm, E.
- Affiliations
- Chalmers University of Technology (SE)
- Corresponding author
- Hartvigsson, Elias
- Venue
- Renewable Energy
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-06
- Volume
- 171
- Pages
- 915-926
- ISSN
- 0960-1481 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3135791050
- Cited by
- 47
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 7
- FWCI
- 2.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Renewable Energy (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Chalmers Research (Chalmers University of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Swedish Energy Agency
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Energy Engineering and Power Technology › Power Systems and Renewable Energy
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Photovoltaic Systems and Sustainability
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Optimal Power Flow Distribution
- Keywords
- residential photovoltaic systems, grid hosting capacity, low-voltage distribution networks, population density, Sweden, Germany
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