A large number of geographically spread complex renewable projects, with demanding levels of performance, are a challenge to manage. Without a unique, flexible, high-performance and hardware agnostic energy management platform, it becomes almost impossible and is not likely to get any easier in the near future.
In many parts of the world, governments will not sustain renewables’ financial incentives on a long-term period as grid parity is becoming a reality.
Within a couple of days, the United Kingdom and France recently gave us perfect examples of FiT changes with new laws and regulations. In 2010, France had some of the most advantageous FiT in the world at more than 600 €/MWh. France is now about to change its whole FiT structure towards a feed-in-premium tariff structure based on epex spot market plus a variable fee. The UK has also announced that it will control the cost of renewable energies “to ensure consumers are protected from higher energy bills”.
In January 2015, Deutsche Bank published a report which predicts that solar systems will be at grid parity in up to 80 percent of the global market within two years. Deutsche Bank also says unsubsidised rooftop solar electricity costs anywhere between $US0.13 and $US0.23/kWh today, which is well below the retail price of electricity in many markets globally.
Consequently, IPPs – independent power producers – are developing strategies to lower energy prices, adopting concentration and diversification strategies.
