A review of equity in electricity tariffs in the renewable energy era

The rapid growth of distributed renewable energy sources has increased concerns about the fairness of electricity pricing, particularly in the residential sector. Hence, many recent studies have focused on topics of equity in residential electricity tariffs. This paper reviews such studies and places them in a historical context of the study of electricity tariffs and the study of pricing fairness. Studies of scenarios with attention to distributed renewables growth tend to focus primarily on one of three matters: (a) normative concerns, (b) quantifying tariff (or more generally, policy) fairness, and (c) quantifying the transitional fairness of pricing decisions over multi-year timespans. After the review, research gaps in each category are illustrated. This paper also provides stringent comparisons of common methodological choices regarding their influence on fairness calculations. These comparisons highlight choices that ensure rigor and comparability in future studies of tariff fairness. This review provides researchers and policy-makers with a wider perspective of the current state of understanding of the effects of D-RES increases on distributional concerns in residential electricity pricing.