Are renewable energies competitive?

An important factor for integrating renewable energies into the energy system is their cost. Renewable energies will only represent a viable long-term option for electricity supply if they can be operated profitably. The costs at which electricity can be produced from renewable energies depend on many factors. For example, in the case of volatile renewables, these include equipment costs, operating costs, the quality of the sites, and the associated full-load hours of the plants. In addition, it is expected that the production costs for the generation plants will continue to decrease in the future. Based on these considerations, a second important factor for the competitiveness of renewable energies is their revenue potential. The market values of renewable energies and marketing concepts, among many other factors, play an essential role here. Based on these factors, we investigate when and to what extent renewables will displace electricity generation from thermal power plants and how this switch will affect the electricity price.

Specifically, we consider the following questions:

• What can we learn from the auctions for RE?
• At which costs can RE bid in the market?
• Ground-mounted PV or building-mounted PV?
• Which technology is the best?
• How much of which technology do I need?
• How will the investment costs of renewable energies develop?
• How can renewables be better integrated into the energy system?