Will the Grid Win? Household solar, storage and the economics of self-consumption in six European markets

Does a household that puts solar panels on its roof in 2027 end up paying less for the electricity it uses than it would have paid the grid, and does adding a battery help? We ask the question for six European markets chosen to span the continent’s range of sunshine, retail prices, tariff structures and compensation rules, using a 25-year cash-flow model of a 5 kWp rooftop system with and without a 10 kWh battery. Equipment prices and support rules are those in force on 23 October 2026; the grid benchmark is the Eurostat household price for the first half of 2026. The share of generation that a household consumes on site is not assumed but simulated hourly from PVGIS output and a standard household load, and the household is matched to the price band it actually falls in. For a household consuming 3,750 kWh a year, self-consumed rooftop electricity is cheaper than the grid in Romania, Poland and Sweden, marginally cheaper in Greece, and dearer in Finland and Norway. A battery does not pay for such a household anywhere: the incremental net present value is negative in all six markets, including with the Polish storage grant and the Swedish tax deduction. For an electrically heated Nordic house of about 20,000 kWh, modelled with a temperature-driven load, the roof wins in Sweden and Finland but still loses in Norway. A breakeven analysis shows how far real grid prices would have to fall for these results to reverse, and a decomposition of the grid price suggests that the grid’s realistic route to closing the gap runs through fixed network charges rather than lower bills. A Shapley attribution finds that the solar resource decides the outcome in four markets, installed cost in Poland and capital support in Sweden. The attached archive contains the model code and data that reproduce every table and figure.