Original Article

Differences between economical, ecological and societal optimal designs of solar parks due to feed-in restrictions

TNO Energy and Materials Transition – Solar Energy, Westerduinweg 3, 1755 LE Petten, the Netherlands

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Received: 24 September 2025
Accepted: 21 January 2026
Published online: 23 February 2026

Abstract

With increasing market share of distributed, renewable electricity generation, challenges like net congestion, become increasingly relevant. Solar parks in northwest Europe are generating electrical energy homogeneously over the full capacity range. To increase the utilisation of the grid connection, the AC:DC ratio, the grid export limit relative to installed DC capacity, of solar parks is reduced which clips the high production hours. In this work, we investigate how such an external force changes the optimal design of solar parks for lowest levelised cost of electricity and average capture price and how it depends on other factors such as module price and land cost. We show that costs and a low AC:DC ratio shift the optimal design to low angle and high ground coverage ratio. On the other hand, energy yield per panel and ecological considerations favour higher tilt angles and lower ground coverage ratio.