International Comparison

Abstract

In this section we will carry out the study in other European countries so as to determine in which country grid parity is more likely to be reached. The first problem we faced is that the daily curve of the domestic electrical consumption is not publicly available in most of the countries. Consequently, we decided to limit our study to Mediterranean countries and to make the hypothesis that the shape of the load curve in Spain is acceptable for them. Indeed, what greatly characterizes its profile are the peak hours which depends on the climate (necessity for heating or for air-conditioning) and on the duration of the day (if the sunset comes early the needs in lighting are higher); and we can consider that these parameters are quite similar for all the Mediterranean area. However, these countries have different standards of living that influence the electric consumption. For instance, Greece is poorer than Spain, this is why, on average, Greek households have less domestic equipment (TV, dishwasher, video games console…) than Spanish one, and therefore they consume less electricity. Moreover, the load curve is also influenced by the heating system most used in the country, as in some gas heating systems are more popular than electrical one for example. To take that into account, each curve will be weighted with the average electric consumption of its respective country.