Solar Photovoltaic Energy and Its Spatial Dependence

In the last decade, solar photovoltaic has started to play a significant role in the energy mix consumption. Although this growth has involved almost all the western countries, marked differences in the regional distribution of photovoltaic generation capacity have been observed. These differences appear to be weakly related to climate conditions in general, and to solar radiation specifically. The literature has started to investigate the other underlying determinants, suggesting to consider the occurrence of spatial proximity effects. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze whether and to what extent the photovoltaic energy production depends on local factors, such as climate, demand, income, innovative and responsible behavior, and so forth. Through a spatial autoregressive model, we find that the regional distribution of photovoltaic production capacity is affected by strong spatial dependence. We show that the availability of photovoltaic energy may be explained by peer effects, such as diffusion of habits and emulation of neighbors.