The impact of large-scale solar generation on utility revenue

The upsurge of renewable energy penetration has hit the South African mainstream. The photovoltaic (PV) products are becoming cheaper, and they gain people's trust for onsite local power generation since it does not bear any transmission and distribution cost. The market acceleration of the product becomes a drawback to the utility industry working tirelessly to regulate and maintain their existing centralized network In this paper, we looked at the different component of a PV system and narrowed down to the low costs inverters which took the market by storm. We did a case study on a property that has a utility installation and PV generation. We populated the data from the PV system and the history to analyze the offset percentage and the possible revenue loss by the municipality. The outcome for this case study is discussed in conclusion to evaluate the utility losses on massive PV penetration in residential sectors.