CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In this work, a study of grid parity for solar photovoltaic (PV) generation is conducted in the Salta province in Argentina, which has a net metering scheme since 2014. The ?grid parity? concept is meant to describe the point in time when a developing technology can generate power at a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for the same cost or lower than the price of purchasing electricity from the power distribution grid. Then, to analyse the grid parity in Salta, the LCOE of solar PV installed by residential users is compared to the current electricity-grid price for such end-users. While the installation of solar distributed generation implies important energy benefits, the main results show that the grid parity is not achieved for residential users in Salta yet. Some causes of that are the high interest rates of loans in Argentina for investing in this kind of technology and the current subsidized prices of electricity. Despite the PV electricity generation is not economically competitive with the electricity-grid prices for now, it is expected a great reduction in the installation costs of PV units and a growth of electricity prices from the power energy market for reaching the grid parity to the PV distributed generation in the next years. Based on that, the smart grid concept can allow a proper penetration of solar distributed generation, but it involves several challenges for the tariff regulations, service management, network operation and cybersecurity issues. In this last sense, some cybersecurity practices are discussed here, which must be followed to ensure that the net-metering tariff is assessed based on reliable values, for instance, that the energy values produced by the PV generation could not be modified neither by the PV?s owners nor the utilities for taking advantage themselves.