Implementing Photovoltaics on Caribbean Islands via Net-Billing for the Example of St. Vincent – An Economical Approach for Independent Producers, Utilities and Governments

Photovoltaic (PV) will play a major role in the global Energiewende. Especially on Caribbean islands it is the most promising power generation technology based on high solar radiation, easy scaling and expensive conventional diesel power generation. Even though PV is economically competitive on almost all Caribbean islands, it has only been significantly installed on islands with regulatory frameworks such as feed-in tariffs or net metering schemes. Within this work the benefits of net-billing schemes (feed-in tariff below the retail price) are analyzed for the Caribbean along the example of St Vincent. The analysis shows that this framework offers a huge economic and ecological potential extending St Vincent’s power generation with PV. By choosing the optimized net-billing tariff private investors, the utility, consumer and the entire economy of St Vincent can profit.