Investment Timing and Social Welfare under Feed-in Tariff Contract

Abstract

This paper presents a novel model to analyze the effects on the investment timing and social welfare of three feed-in tariffs (FIT) within an oligopolistic market structure. The FIT contracts are the fixed price, the fixed premium, and the minimum price guarantee. The model allows the identification of the optimal time to deploy a renewable energy project and the value of the tariff that maximizes the social welfare for each FIT design. These optimal tariffs generate the same investment timing and the same social welfare.