Analysis of regulatory effectiveness of different international regions to enable the residential prosumers participation

Abstract

Introduction. There is a need to establish a more appropriate regulation that increases its effectiveness by encouraging the participation of prosumers in the Honduran energy market. The research aim was to contribute to the discussion of effective regulatory frameworks that shape the proposal technical regulations. Methods. This study had a non-experimental design with a descriptive cross-sectional approach and used benchmarking as its main tool. The trajectories of annual installed capacities of California in the United States, Northern Territory in Australia, and Costa Rica were benchmarked against pre-established parameters. We normalized the annual installed capacity curves with respect to the annual populations of each of the first three regions to compare their installed capacities per capita.  Results. Of all the regions analyzed, the inhabitants of the Northern Territory in Australia had the greatest access to photovoltaic installed power due to the maximum value of their Feed-in-Tariff (FIT), as well as their consistency through the years. This allowed them a greater volume of energy they could sell in the local energy market. Conclusion. For Honduran residential prosumers to achieve a greater participation in the energy market, it may be necessary to define a FIT close to the 1:1 ratio under a long-term validity. A maximum rate of 1:1 led to increase the installed capacity, meanwhile the adoption of a capacity constraint slows down the prosumer participation.