Spain is immersed in a real boom in electricity self-consumption. The deployment of new facilities is accelerating and last year exceeded all forecasts, which were already optimistic, in the midst of a spiral of price increases due to the energy crisis and thanks to the aid of European funds. In a record 2022, self-consumption doubled in Spain, both in the number of installations and in accumulated power, with a rampant expansion in both private homes and company headquarters.
During the past year, renewable energy companies launched installations throughout the country with a total power of 2,649 megawatts (MW) for self-consumption of electricity, with 1,024 MW in the industrial field and another 1,024 MW in the domestic segment, according to the data collected in the 1st Annual Photovoltaic Self-Consumption Report prepared by APPA Renovables. After last year’s acceleration, with a record that almost equals the deployment of all previous history, self-consumption doubled the power accumulated in the Spanish market, up to 5,211 MW.
In the midst of record expansion, in Spain more than 298,000 homes and 54,000 companies already have solar panels with which they produce all or part of the electricity they consume and with which they lower their electricity bill in the midst of a crisis. Last year alone, the sector added more than 240,000 new installations (217,250 residential installations and 23,100 more in the industrial sector, which includes companies, shops, public administrations and irrigation). The investment executed in 2022 for the implementation of new facilities rose to 3,056 million euros.
The boom will not abate and will continue this year. The forecast managed by APPA Renovables, the association that brings together a hundred companies in the sector of all types of green energies, is that during this year the pace of deployment will at least maintain or even exceed the record of 2022, adding another close to 220,000 houses and 23,000 companies with self-consumption facilities during the year.
“Before, self-consumption generated a lot of doubts among the energy companies themselves. Those of us who bet on him were the romantics in the sector, the geeks. Before the first level electric companies did not believe us, but now they have joined. Rectification is for the wise”, explains Jon Macías, president of the self-consumption area of APPA Renovables, in relation to the current push of activity and the battle between the large electricity companies to promote their expansion in a business growing up. “We are experiencing an unprecedented energy revolution”, he adds.
Wasted energy
During the past year, all self-consumption installations in operation in the country produced a total of 4,564 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity, almost 52% of the previous year and the equivalent of 1, 8% of all electricity demand in Spain during the year, according to the calculations of the renewable employer with data from Red Eléctrica, the manager of the Spanish electricity system.
APPA Renovables reports, however, that active self-consumption installations wasted a fifth of the generation potential, and that up to 1,067 GWh of production was lost last year. A fifth of the potential production is being wasted because, according to the companies, the regulatory barriers that impose difficulties in pouring this electricity into the network, especially in the non-residential area.
The Spanish electrical system would have wasted renewable energy for a value equivalent to 160 million euros due to the impossibility of evacuating this energy to the electrical networks. The renewables sector complains that the current regulation does not facilitate the injection of surpluses due to a lack of capacity in the networks or difficulties in obtaining access, and because surpluses can only be poured in as a small consumer if the facilities have a power of less than 100 kilowatts. “Many companies are opting for installations of less than 100 kilowatts”, he adds.