Spain lives a Historical expansion wave of electricity self-consumption. Deployment of new facilities completely exceeded all forecasts last year spiral of price increases due to the energy crisis and thanks to aid financed by European funds. A record 2022 ended with an uncontrolled expansion in both private homes and industrial company headquarters, doubling the size of self-consumption in the country in terms of both the number of plants and accumulated power.
Renewable energy companies have had a real boom, launching self-consumption facilities across the country last year. 2,650 megawatts of total power (MW) doubled its accumulated power in the Spanish market to over 5,200 MW. multiple in spain 298,000 homes and 54,000 companies already have solar panels that they produce all or some of the electricity they consume and reduce their electricity bills in times of crisis.
But in the midst of this record growth, the industry warns and warns of some major shortcomings in the industry: legal restrictions and current technical limitations cause millions of losses and causing huge amounts of cheap energy to go to waste in the midst of an energy crisis.
In addition to generating electricity to meet some of the household or company’s consumption, these facilities can also generate electricity by injecting some of their production into the grid. extra income in return. But problems with powering the grid have created a gap of already more than 300m euros in recent years. in practice electricity is drawn and will not be used to meet some of the demand of the Spanish electricity system.
20% of wasted light
During the past year, all self-consumption plants operating in the country generated a total of 4,564 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity. 52% more than the previous year It is equivalent to 1.8% of all electricity demand in Spain during the year, according to data from Red Eléctrica, the manager of the Spanish electricity system.
From APPA Renovables, the employers’ association that brings together companies in all renewable sub-sectors and has a dedicated self-consumption division, active self-consumption facilities they wasted a fifth of their production potentialand estimated production loss of up to 1,067 GWh last year. It was also in the year of the worst of the energy crisis.
A 19% of all production that could be obtained from these facilities was wastedAs condemned by companies, regulatory barriers Many self-consumers make it difficult to transfer this electricity to the grid, due to the barriers distributors face in accessing permission to inject their own energy into the grid, and some technical limitations of the available equipment. reverse the process to the normal one and switch the electricity from low voltage to high voltage to carry. Without this clamping, self-consumption could have met 2.2%, not 1.8%, of all national electricity demand last year.
Spanish electricity system according to APPA calculations Waste of renewable energy for a value equivalent to 160 million last year Due to the impossibility of evacuating this energy in electricity grids, a gap of 274 million euros has accumulated since 2015, and to this must be added the impact accumulated so far this year, it far exceeds 300 million euros.
Network Input
“Self-consumption is facing a major hurdle, posed by the barriers that distribution companies have put in order to have a connection point to the grid. They issue these permits whenever and wherever they want, with long waiting times and sometimes at points far from the production facility,” explains Francisco Valverde of the Menta Energía consulting firm. Actually, the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) opened the first cases To ensure that, according to ‘El Confidencial’, there are no intentional barriers to accessing the self-consumption network.
The renewable energy sector notes that current regulation does not facilitate the injection of surpluses due to a lack of capacity in grids or difficulties in providing access. “The biggest problem, saturation of electrical networksJosé María González Moya, managing director of APPA, underlines that in many places self-consumers do not have the capacity to discharge energy and are unable to do so.
Power plants with a power of more than 15 kilowatts (kw) are required to seek permission from the managers of their distribution networks – large electricity groups – in order to discharge and compensate the excess electricity. Also, if the power of the facilities is below 100 kilowatts, you can drain the excess as a small consumer. Self-consumers with a power greater than 100 kW have to be a wholesaler, with the consequent added complexity of bureaucratic procedures to do and achieve the same procedures as any major electricity producer. “If these power plants could deliver their electricity in a simplified way, they would be injecting a lot of energy into the electrical system at zero price. to benefit all consumers‘ sums up Valverde.
In addition, the renewable sector is the source of some industrial producers. to establish sub-power plants that they can afford To avoid these legal restrictions. “Many companies, even though they have the capacity and are willing to do so, opt for installations of less than 100 kilowatts, just to avoid the legal limit and to compensate for some of the consumption by simplified transfer to the grid.” sums up Moya.
According to various installers, many industrial self-consumers can install more power to get the most out of their installation, but some are forced to do so because there is no possibility of draining or it is not clear that there will be enough capacity. limit power It is established in order not to be able to pour their excess energies and not be able to pay from them.
Parallel to this scenario, the renewable energy sector warns that many industries that set up self-consumption facilities waste renewable generation when production stops and does not consume energy. They do not discharge electricity on weekends or holidays or directly stop green energy production.