Spain loses 160 million euros in 2022 due to wasted energy from self-consumption

No one would imagine that in the midst of an energy war, with the blackout alarms going off for much of the year and dozens of measures encouraging energy savings, 1,067 GWh, worth 160 million euros, would be wasted.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
13 February 2023 Monday 19:26
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Spain loses 160 million euros in 2022 due to wasted energy from self-consumption

No one would imagine that in the midst of an energy war, with the blackout alarms going off for much of the year and dozens of measures encouraging energy savings, 1,067 GWh, worth 160 million euros, would be wasted.

Well, that inconsistency is what has occurred in Spain during 2022, according to calculations made by the Association of Renewable Energy Companies (APPA). "This means that Spain wastes 19% of the installed self-consumption energy, especially in industrial facilities, and the reason lies in the difficulties that the owners of these self-consumption plants have to dump their surpluses into the network," he explained on Monday. Jon Macías Santiago, president of APPA Autoconsumo, during the presentation of the First Annual Report on Photovoltaic Self-consumption.

These losses are caused by how difficult it is to transfer excess production to the grid, for example, factories that use energy from their own self-consumption plates during working days, but lose it while they are closed on weekends. In the case of small installations in homes, the situation is less complicated since most of the installers establish a system, more or less remunerated, for these surpluses. But when it comes to larger facilities and in industries, everything gets complicated.

“Many are not even designed with the capacity to transfer surpluses to the network and others, those greater than 100 kilowatts (kW) face access problems due to lack of capacity in the connection nodes, especially in the connections to the high power, because it is saturated or so far from the installation that it is not worth it for the industry to undertake that investment”, explains José María González Moya, general director of APPA renewables.

Some losses that, despite everything, do not prevent 2022 from being classified as "excellent" in the face of this type of energy self-consumption. “It is an unprecedented energy revolution. That 2,649 MW of clean generation have been installed is good. But the most important thing is that this growth means that 217,248 new homes have joined self-consumption and are the new apostles of this new way of consuming. Thank you for passing on your very positive experience to your family and friends. They are the best ambassadors self-consumption could have”, says Jon Macías.

In total, in 2022, 2,649 new MW for self-consumption were installed in Spain, which represents a growth of 98% compared to the 1,515 MW installed in 2021 and 325.2% compared to the year in which it was installed. The energy crisis started. With this boost, Spain already has a total of 298,000 homes and 54,000 business facilities and doubles the total generation capacity to 5,211 MW, 1.8% of all national electricity demand, according to the Appa Autoconsumo report.

Since photovoltaic self-consumption began to emerge in Spain in 2015, the country has gone from an annual production of 25 GWh to 4,564 GWh.

In the industrial field, which includes shops and public companies, during 2022, 23,096 new photovoltaic self-consumption installations were added. Less number, but greater volume than residential, which means that they represent 61%, 1,625 MW, of the total installed.

“Actually, the growth of industrial facilities could have been much higher if it weren't for the fact that they face more difficult barriers than residential facilities. On the one hand, accessing aid from the Next Generation funds is much more complicated, and on the other hand, there is the limitation to installations of more than 100 MW of the authorization to dump self-consumption surpluses. Those that are larger are forced to sell it and carry out as many bureaucratic steps as a nuclear power plant, so this greatly discourages large facilities," González Moya points out.

Another of the barriers that self-consumption faces to continue its growth is the installation capacity of companies. “Awareness is very high even in the neighboring communities that in this 2022 have come to the conclusion of the benefits that this modality brings. The problem is that reaching an agreement among all the neighbors is not easy and, furthermore, the installers give priority to the easiest projects, which are those of single-family homes”, assures José María González.

With a view to 2023, from APPA they trust that the fall in the costs of materials and the high prices that electricity will offer in the wholesale markets and the readjustment of supply and demand, can continue to multiply photovoltaic self-consumption in Spain.