The self-consumption boom that the sector experienced in 2022 has had its consequences. The inability of specialized companies to meet the demand has meant that they have launched into the installation of professional solar panels from other disciplines and this has put their quality at risk.
This was reported this Monday by Jon Macías, president of APPA Autoconsumo. “We have seen facilities that we do not like because the quality of the facilities has not been adequate. When you grow in three digits, this happens in any sector and there is intrusion that affects,” he says.
To try to alleviate this situation, the association has signed a collaboration agreement with the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE), which belongs to the Ministry of Ecological Transition to increase training and provide professionals with adequate training to the market.
In any case, it is, in principle, a specific problem since it has been detected in the facilities that were set up in 2022 when the sector experienced a boom in demand that has subsided in 2023, “the first year of the historical series in which the demand for self-consumption has fallen,” as confirmed by José María González Moya, General Director of the Association.
Specifically, according to data collected by APPA, in 2023, 1,943 new megawatts (MW) of self-consumption were installed in Spain, which represents a drop of 26% compared to the record set in 2022. The drop was more pronounced in residential sector, which decreased by 49%, compared to the 13% reduction in the installation of new industrial power. In terms of number of installations, there are 127,000 new ones. Of them, 88% (111,795) were in homes while 12% (15,509) were in companies.
With this increase, the installed power for self-consumption reaches 7,262 GWh, equivalent to 3% of electricity demand. “It is a total that already exceeds the total power of nuclear energy. That does not mean that it surpasses it in generation because nuclear plants have continuous production, which does not happen with photovoltaics, which only produces during sunny hours. Even so, it is of sufficient weight to make it a rarity that only the associations provide data on these facilities and there is no public data,” Macías pointed out.
Despite this slowdown, the sector is confident in the growth potential since “only 7% of single-family homes and 2% of companies have self-consumption facilities,” said González Moya, who in turn is "confident" and sees it as "feasible" for Spain to "reach the objective set by the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (Pniec) of installing 19 GW of self-consumption."
The report also highlights that the efficiency of the system as a whole has improved and the losses of the facilities have been reduced compared to 2022. If two years ago, 19% of the generation of all self-consumption facilities, 160 million euros, was wasted, In 2023 that amount was reduced by 18% and to a value close to 131 million euros. This is above all a problem of large industrial facilities that responds “to the absurd situation of having to block generation with anti-discharge systems due to regulatory and technical limitations,” the association warns.
