If households acquire a PV system and thus become prosumers, i.e. not only consume energy but also produce it, this can lead to behavioral changes that influence the overall consumption of the household. The EE-Rebound project investigated rebound effects that can occur as a result of switching to prosuming. In this working paper, the environmental and economic effects that occur due to behavioral changes such as rebound effects are analyzed and presented for the household level.
First, prosumer households are mapped using a simulation model. In different scenarios, generation, self-consumption and feed-in of prosumers are simulated. The scenarios are characterized by different consumption behavior, household and system sizes. Overall, as expected, the switch to prosuming results in lower grid purchases compared to pure consumption. Furthermore, it becomes clear that total consumption as well as grid purchases increase due to rebound effects as well as additional consumers, while grid purchases can be reduced by load shifting. Even though feared curtailment can be a reason for additional consumption after the installation of a PV system, the simulations were able to show that curtailment is actually unproblematic, as it is relatively low in all scenarios.
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