The deployment of distributed and affordable renewable energy has led to the development of the prosumer concept in the field of energy. To better understand its relevance and to analyse the main trends and research developments, a systematic literature review was performed. This work gathered 1673 articles related to this topic that were analysed following the PRISMA methodology with the help of VOSviewer 1.6.18 bibliometric software. These papers are classified into four clusters: smart grids, microgrids, peer to peer networks, and prosumers. The first two clusters show a certain degree of maturity, while the latter maintain a growing interest. The analysis of the articles provides a broad view of the prosumer’s role in energy and its potential, which is not limited to simple energy exchanges. Furthermore, this systematic review highlights the challenges, not only technical but also in terms of electricity market design and social aspects. The latter require further research, as society is undergoing a paradigm shift in the way in which energy is produced and used. How this shift occurred will determine whether it can lead to true prosumer empowerment and a fairer energy transition.

As grid parity is reached in many countries, photovoltaic self-consumption is raising great interest. Currently, there is a big number of new projects being developed in Spain thanks to the new regulation. From the experience of the monitoring of one full year of operation of a self-consumption PV plant in a university building, a regulatory, energy, and economic analysis is made for this type of building. It has been carried out by simulating the behavior of the building with installations within the range of PV powers allowed in the Spanish regulation. The analysis shows the good fitting between the new Royal Decree of Self-Consumption and the new Building Code. The economic analysis proves that the new simplified compensation method gives the best economic return for this use of the buildings when the PV production is matched with the consumption. The time of return of investment is between 8 and 9 years, and the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is into the range of the pool market price of electricity. These results show the profitability of PV self-consumption for this type of building.

As solar photovoltaics in buildings reaches maturity, grid integration and economic yield are topics of greater interest. The traditional design of photovoltaic installations has considered the optimal orientation of photovoltaic modules to be that which yields the maximum annual energy production. The influence of the consumption patterns and the hourly variable electricity prices implies that this traditional optimal design might not be the most profitable. Using a full-year dataset for a residential installation, alternative installations using canopies and modules attached to the façades are simulated. By evaluating the energy balances for different annual consumptions, it is found that the canopy and façade installations offer better self-consumption of the PV produced energy, reflected in a 9% higher self-consumption degree using modules on façades and a 5% higher self-consumption degree using canopies. The economic evaluation under the new electricity tariffs in Spain shows a better profit for PV self-consumption, reducing the time of return on investment by more than 2 years. The analysis of different alternatives for an industrial PV allowed us to identify several benefits for these orientations which are confirmed after a full year of operation, such as an increase of up to 59% in annual energy production over the optimal-producing orientation.

As Solar Photovoltaics in buildings reaches maturity, grid integration and economic yield are topics of greater interest. Some strategies like demand shift management or storing electricity in batteries are proposed to reach a higher share of PV into the distribution grid. The price reduction of solar PV has driven a change in support policies from the feed-in tariff to net metering and, nowadays, to net billing schemes. With an increase in PV installations, aesthetical aspects are more valued, and coplanar placement of modules is preferred. By analyzing the operation of two PV installations: one residential and another industrial, we will show that smart use of these non-optimal orientations for the yearly production can be more convenient. Through the economic evaluation of several PV orientations, it is found that the economic performance could minimize the energy loss from optimal. The analysis of different alternatives for each study case has allowed us to identify several benefits for these orientations.

Demand charges are widely used for commercial and industrial consumers. These costs are often not well known, let alone the effects that PV can have on them. This work proposes a methodology to assess the effect of PV on reducing these charges and to optimise the power to be contracted, using techniques taken from exploratory data analysis. This methodology is applied to five case studies of industrial consumers from different sectors in Spain, finding savings between 5 % and 11 % of demand charges in industries with continuous operation and up to 28 % in cases of discontinuous operation. These savings can be even greater if the maximum power that can be contracted is lower than the optimum. The demand charges in Spain consist of a fixed part proportional to the contracted power and a variable part depending on the power peaks exceeding it. Since for the variable part the coincident and non-coincident models coexist, a comparison is made between the two models, finding that in the general case PV users can achieve higher savings with the coincident model.