Energy Decree 17/2022 is now law and there are several interesting measures for solar installations
Today we are going to talk about the regulation on remote self-consumption: businesses and apartment blocks will be able to connect directly to renewable energy production plants, provided that the line connecting the place where energy is consumed and the place where it is produced is no longer than 10 km and that no parties other than the producer and the individual consumer are connected to it.
Article 10b of the voted text, intervening on the regulation of the self-consumer of renewable energy, specifies that the self-consumption may also take place with one or more Fer plants located in buildings or in sites other than those where the self-consumer operates, if such buildings or sites are at the self-consumer’s disposal.
The system with the above-mentioned characteristics can be directly interconnected to the end customer’s utility with a connection of up to 10 km, to which no other utility can be connected.
It then allows self-consumers of renewable energy – who use the existing distribution network to share the energy produced by renewable energy plants and consume it at their own withdrawal points – access to incentives and compensation for energy sharing (collective self-consumption or energy communities, Articles 8 and 31 of Legislative Decree 199/2021).
In the case of a self-consumer from a plant directly interconnected to the user, the latter can instead access, if the prerequisites are met, the incentives for plants of more than 1 MW (art. 6 of Legislative Decree 199/2021), for small plants (art. 7) and for energy sharing (art. 8).
In these cases, general system charges are applied to the same extent as they are applied to the sharing of energy produced by renewable energy installations through the existing distribution network.
Opportunities
The area where the energy is produced must be at the disposal of the energy consumer, but the facilities do not necessarily have to be operated by the energy consumer: they can also be owned or operated by third parties, as long as they remain subject to the instructions of the consumer.
The savings can be significant because energy can be transported directly from the production plant to the consumption plant without the intermediation of traders, without using energy dispatching and transmission services, and without being subject to payment for energy losses.
Notwithstanding the construction costs of the power line, the main saving is to be able to have the energy at the production price, to which must be added the saving for services not used, which is about 23÷28 euros per MWh and, in the case of the coincidence of producer and consumer, the tax saving for the self-production of energy at excise duties of 12 euros per MWh. System charges on self-consumed energy will have to be paid in full.