Romanian standard photovoltaic module prices

Starting from 2016, there were 3.36 million residential dwellings in Romania that could be suitable for deployment of solar PV systems [30 ]. Although Romania has one of the largest potential residential PV capacity (5.9 GW) in the European Union, the rooftop PV accounts less than 1% of the total installed PV capacity (2.5 GW) [ 30 ].

Romanian solar resource conditions At the end of 2018, Europe has registered a cumulative PV capacity of 119.3 GW, out of which 115.2 GW in European Union. In the same period, in Romania, the cumulative installed PV capacity reached 1377 MW, while at the end of 2012 was of only 41 MW [ 46 ].

The economic feasibility assessment revealed the significant potential for implementing grid-connected residential rooftop PV systems in Romania and also that the profitability of DGUs from the Northern part of the country is lower than in the Southern part.

China has become the market leader in solar PV by implementing several programs and policies, such as “Golden Sun projects”, a series of “Solar Energy Development Five Year Plan”, “PV poverty alleviation” to boost the distributed solar PV cumulative capacity to 63.44 GW by 2019 [ 33, 35 ].

DPP for 5.5 kW PV systems from Romania are inferior to that obtained in Palestine, where the DPP of a 5 kW PV system is in the range of 4.92–4.96 years [ 63 ]. The obtained results are highly dependent on the upfront subsidies that favors mainly the deployment of PV systems with a low installed power.

For promoting residential rooftop PV systems investments, the policymakers can raise the price for the surplus of electricity fed into the grid, but when their deployment rate achieves a specific target, the policymakers can reduce the injected energy price [ 29 ].