​Prosumers have started installing more PV panels than they consume, with the idea of ​​making a business out of selling the excess energy. But this creates imbalance problems across the grid, says the president of ANRE, which is proposing a cap on the power people can install on rooftops.

The role of prosumers is to make us energy efficient, to reduce our bills in times of high energy and gas prices, not to make money from it, said George Niculescu, president of ANRE, during the launch conference of Good Code practices in the renewable energy sector.

“I encouraged and still believe in the role of consumers as a measure of energy efficiency. I still believe that in order to reduce our utility bills, we need to turn to rooftop solar panels as residential consumers. But I do not believe in increasing the production capacity in order to excessively monetize this surplus of energy that they produce,” Niculescu says.

He noted that there are situations when the consumer, although he has a technical permit to connect only 5 MW, installs 20 MW because the roof allows, but in this way unbalances the distribution network.

“We find ourselves in a situation where the tenth neighbor across the street can no longer connect, and if it does, we will have problems with low-voltage wiring. Therefore, I believe, it is necessary to introduce a threshold for these capacities, a percentage of what you need to consume. We don’t want to slow down this process, but we want it to be a measure of energy efficiency, not monetization of the situation,” NARE president emphasized.

Gabriel Andronake, vice-president of ANRE, recently said that photovoltaic panels are now being installed so fast that next year we could have an installed capacity of 2,000 MW, almost as much as three nuclear reactors from Cernavoda.

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