DPV Customer Formulation
DPV markets comprise a multitude of individual customers who have made a personal decision to invest in a solar system for their home or business. Each customer is unique with respect to how much electricity they consume, where they are located, the cost, size and performance of their DPV system, and various other important characteristics.
However, DPV analyses are often conducted to understand consumer behavior or deployment impacts at more systematic levels (e.g., for understanding the impact of policy on all residential customers), and a “perfect” analysis would in theory be one in which each and every prospective DPV customer was explicitly considered. Because doing so is neither practical nor possible from an analysis standpoint, it is critical to carefully design DPV customers who exhibit statistically representative characteristics for the larger pool of customers under consideration in the analysis. In doing so, broader insights might be identified about the potential impact of a particular policy change on the DPV market, or on a certain segment of impacted customers.
While creating average customers is by no means a perfect approach, it is nevertheless a practical necessity and a useful construct to gain insights into broader system-level impacts.
Picking an appropriate analysis method depends on four primary factors:
- DPV Customer Formulation
- Intended Application of Analysis
- Time-related Considerations
- Analysis Stakeholder Perspectives