Romania’s solar rooftop rebate scheme ready to kick off

Romania’s Environment Fund Administration, the funding body for environmental protection, has announced the rebate scheme for residential and commercial and industrial projects will kick off on Friday. Interested participants will have time until March 1 to file applications.

Through the scheme, the Romanian government aims to support the deployment of PV systems of more than 3 kW in size that are installed under net metering rules.

Selected projects may qualify for rebates covering up to 90% of the costs of purchasing and deploying a rooftop array, provided the grant does not exceed RON20,000 ($4,830).

Net metering regulations, approved in June, include fiscal incentives for owners of PV systems not exceeding 27 kW in size. Under the regime, owners of renewable energy systems up to 100 kW in scale may sell surplus power to the nation’s distributors – Enel, CEZ, E.On and Electrica – at a rate to be set by the Romanian Energy Regulatory Authority.

Green light for Romanian solar

The “Casa Verde” – Green House – scheme is aimed at reviving Romania’s solar sector after several years of almost zero growth.

According to the latest statistics published by national grid operator Transelectrica, at the end of September solar had reached an installed capacity of 1,379.5 MW. That means, during the first nine months of last year only around 5 MW of new PV were deployed. In 2017, new capacity had reached only 3 MW.

The slowing of the Romanian solar market was essentially due to the lack of a regulatory scheme supporting distributed generation, as well as to a reduction in the mandatory quota of electricity generated from renewable energy sources – and therefore benefiting from a green certificate scheme – from 12.1% in 2016 to 8.3% in 2017.

Most of the solar installed in the country is represented by megawatt-sized PV plants built under the green certificate scheme launched in 2011.