Abstract:

Domestic electricity price (P) from twenty different countries in Europe, Asia and America is compared with various combinations of the total electricity generation, the installed capacity and the actual energy delivered by wind and solar (variable renewable energy, VRE) in 2019. There is a positive correlation between P and per capita installed capacity of VRE but it is weaker than reported in the past just for Europe. The strongest correlation, with an R² of 0.71, of P is with the ratio of the maximum possible energy from wind and solar working continuously at rated capacity to the actual total electricity generation. The various correlations suggest that, though there would also be other policy options, the impact of VRE on P can be moderated by reducing the fraction of electricity supplied by VRE through the use of other CO₂-free energy sources and/or more efficient VRE via higher capacity factors.

Key words: wind energy, solar energy, electricity, domestic electricity prices, variable renewable energy (VRE), capacity factor