Romanians who want to become consumers will have special funds next year to buy energy storage equipment. In this way, they will also be able to consume the electricity produced by their own panels in the evening, even if they are not at home during the day. In addition, they will no longer create imbalances in the distribution network, which will thus be able to connect more consumers, says Gabriel Andronac, vice president of ANRE.

The latest available data shows that at the end of September there were 97,000 consumers in Romania with a total installed capacity of 1,225 MW.

By comparison, the year began with 44,000 prosumers that had 478 MW installed.

The authorities expect that by the end of the year there will be a capacity of 1500-1600 MW, and at the end of the first quarter of next year – up to 2000 MW.

“The prosumer produces energy for its own consumption. In this sense, for a month there has been discussion at the government level that the next Casa Verde PV program should be accompanied by storage capacity.

When we’re not at home and those panels are producing – and they’re producing especially when we’re not at home – the energy has to be stored, instead of going into the system and putting pressure on the distribution system, and the distributors have to do amplification, expansion and so on . All this will then go into the tariff (all consumers pay – no). The idea is to be as efficient as possible,” Andronash said at the ZF Energy conference.

This storage capacity will also be effective in situations like this past weekend, when more than 360,000 customers were left without power due to inclement weather.

“If they had storage capacity, it would be much better,” the representative of the regulator explained.

Asked if the value of the voucher would be increased to also cover warehouse equipment, he said:

“We are analyzing how we will act further. There is a possibility that in the future we will do a storage-only project for consumers who have already purchased PV panels.”