Prosumers: Grid Storage vs Small Fuel-Cell

The number of prosumers-consumers equipped with decentralized production-is expected to increase following the revised Renewable Energy Directive (2018/2001) and the rising energy prices. The economic literature suggests there is room for demand-side storage that can take two forms: decentralized or centralized. The schemes promoting investments in solar capacity physically allow for only one type of demand-side storage. One may wonder about the conditions under which consumers invest in different technologies. We build a stylized microeconomic model of the energy market and perform a numerical evaluation, using publicly available data from France, to compare two regulations-price and quantity-from our representative consumer's and the Distributed System Operator's points of view. The two energy regulations lead to three types of profiles: consumers, prosumers, and storers. These profiles are in line with previous studies focusing on price regulation. With quantity regulation, a grid tariff such that consumers invest in storage depends on endogenous parameters. The results suggest that with the current price regulation in France, only a smaller feed-in-tariff would encourage investments in decentralized hydrogen-based storage. A grid tariff such that consumers inject energy into the grid would not reflect the cost of centralized hydrogen-based storage. However, a quantity regulation would be less costly to support.