Romanians are increasingly interested in installing photovoltaic panels and reducing electricity bills. Last year, the installed capacity tripled and became similar to the Chernavod NPP. Things are just getting started, and the pace is expected to be at least as brisk this year. It is time to move to the next level and form energy communities where participants can compensate each other with cheap energy, even if some of them live in the block. This is how the problem of imbalance in the network is solved, they say on the ground.

Investments in photovoltaic panels now have to take into account certain technical limitations, especially due to the imbalance they cause in the grids. This is because the production of solar panels is very high during the day when consumption is low, but decreases in the evening when people come home, turn on the lights, turn on the appliances and charge their electric cars.

But the phenomenon of prosumers is much more widespread in the countries of Western Europe. How did they manage to overcome the problem of imbalance?

It’s about building energy communities, says Dan Piersan, president of the Romanian Association of Consumers and Energy Communities (APCE).

“This is the next level of consumer organization. The profit is reinvested in the construction of new capacities, it is not intended to be monetized by community members,” he told HotNews.ro.

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

Viorel Alikush, director of the National Energy Regulatory Authority, admits that this transition from a consumer who strictly evaluates energy in the network to a consumer who can compensate with the help of other consumers or compensate himself if he has more points of interest is a very important consumption.

The possibility of compensation by another point of consumption appeared in the law, which was voted in the parliament, but which was sent for reconsideration by President Klaus Iohannis (read why here).

“This is the first step towards energy communities. The practice in Europe is to carry out transactions of this type between consumers or energy communities behind a transformer station, that is, between 10-15-20 consumers and consumers in this region,” Alikush said at the end of last year at a conference. on prosumers.

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.

What exactly does the energy community do?

In total, there are more than 2.5 thousand energy communities in Europe, which unite more than 50 thousand individuals and legal entities.

“The goal is to have as much production capacity as possible and thus keep the price down,” says Dan Pearson.

For example, an energy community can consist of one village, two or five neighboring villages. The energy produced on this territory is also consumed there and remains in the community. The panels produce mostly during the day, and that’s when energy is cheap and can be consumed not necessarily by those who own the panels, but by their neighbors or someone else in that community who needs it at that moment.

“It is very important: those who live in the quarter also have the opportunity to participate in these energy communities. They are now captive to classic providers, but these communities will have lower prices because they are not profit-oriented. Another possibility for residents of the block is to become prosumers of another house they own, and thus compensate for the consumption of the block,” said the representative of the prosumers.

A European directive specifically for prosumers is being prepared

Recently, the Association of Consumers and Energy Communities was created, whose representatives sent requests to the leadership of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to participate in the debate on the law returned to the parliament.

APCE has also submitted documentation for joining RESCOOP, a profile association of prosumers at the European level, based in Belgium.

He also reported that a draft European directive is currently being discussed in Brussels, which will concern exclusively the issue of consumers.

“Such a regulatory act will shed light and clarify the problem of consumers so that states have a framework on which to base their national legislation,” Pearson said.

At the beginning of this year, the number of prosumers reached 108 thousand, and the installed capacity of photovoltaic panels is 1400 MW.

By comparison, at the beginning of last year, Romania had 44,000 prosumers with only 478 MW of installed capacity.

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