Interest in becoming prosumers is growing, including those living on the block. The roof of apartment buildings has been used successfully in other countries to supply electricity to residents, but in Romania this can only be done for common areas such as stairwell lighting and elevator operation. This is due to the fact that there are no provisions in the legislation according to which the energy produced on a common roof can also be used in people’s apartments.

Photovoltaic systems with a capacity of 5 to 20 kW can be installed on the roofs of buildings in Romania, Dan Pearsan, president of the Association of Energy Consumers and Communities of Romania (APCE), told HotNews.ro.

To better understand, a 5kW system is average in size for a point of consumption.

The cost of such a system can range from 750 to 900 euros per kW, depending on the selected materials and roof geometry.

“On a roof of 100 square meters, I think it is possible to install a system with a capacity of 6-7 kW. But at the moment, from my point of view, it’s just a waste of money. Provided that only less than 10% can actually be consumed, i.e. only for the elevator, if there is one, and for indoor and outdoor lighting, i.e. nothing else. “Energy will just be a one-year credit line for the electricity providers, instead of providing real value to tenants,” he says.

This is explained by the fact that the rest of the generated energy cannot be consumed in people’s apartments and is fed into the network.

For this reason, there are less than 50 buildings in Romania that have installed such systems on their roofs.

How can energy be consumed in apartments?

For this, we need to change the legislation and introduce the so-called Virtual Net Metering, as it is done in other countries, – Pearsan also says.

Everyone understands that the supplier of this building offsets the energy fed into the grid by the roof panels with the consumption of each tenant.

“Without Virtual Net Metering, it’s impossible to quantify how many customers are using — and how much — solar on a shared roof without dual metering.

But there is another way out: if tenants decide to be suppliers or register as consumers in the energy community. They can combine the energy produced by the panels installed on the roof of the block in this community and benefit all tenants from reduced electricity rates of up to 62% for each. I mean extremely.

This may explain the persistence in providing clear and supportive legislation to energy communities in Romania. A good piece of the pie will disappear from the portfolio of energy producers and suppliers,” says Piersan.

At the moment, there is no mention of energy communities in Romanian legislation.

And this despite the fact that more than 9,000 energy communities have sprung up across Europe, involving more than 4% of Europe’s population.

“Not being profit oriented, these communities offered prices as much as 62% lower than the prices of traditional providers.

These energy communities will become a new way of organizing consumers, and there is nothing to prevent us from using our energy in larger or smaller zoned communities. The national system will have to be reformed, that is very clear,” says the representative of prosumers.

Energy communities could completely reform the energy market

And NARE specialists showed the necessity of these legislative changes.

Viorel Alikush, director of the National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE), admits that this transition from a consumer who strictly evacuates energy to the grid, to a consumer who can compensate with the help of other consumers or compensate himself if he has more, is very important in many moments consumption.

“The practice in Europe is to make transactions of this type between consumers or energy communities behind a transformer station, that is, between 10-15-20 consumers and consumers in the area,” Alykus told a consumer conference late last year.

He noted that Portugal is the most advanced country from this point of view, but the best example for us can be Greece, which has managed to create almost 1,000 such communities in the last five years.

“There are certain incentives, but they must be introduced by law. There are no tariffs for the distribution of electricity within the community, which obviously leads to cheaper energy. It is necessary to make changes to the legislative framework to provide these incentives,” said Alykus.

In essence, this is a total reorganization of the energy market as we know it now, where everyone pays distribution tariffs to whoever owns the grid they are connected to.

Romania currently has more than 120,000 customers with an installed capacity of approximately 1,500 MW, which is more than the two nuclear reactors in Cernavod, which have a total capacity of 1,400 MW.

To get an idea of ​​the scale of this phenomenon, at the beginning of 2023 there were only 44,000 consumers with an installed capacity of 478 MW.

• Read also How to become a prosumer, even living in a block / The solution that developed countries have found

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