Just days after Spain's National Energy Commission (CNE) criticized plans to limit small-scale photovoltaic generation in the country, a second powerful Spanish institution has openly sided with the photovoltaic sector in denouncing the proposed hurdles, which the industry sees as unnecessary, disproportionate and discriminatory against new small-scale PV projects for self-consumption.
On September 16, Spain's National Competition Commission (CNC) published a new report on the countrys new draft electricity law in which it criticizes the governments plan to penalize photovoltaic generation.
"By penalizing self-consumption, a specific technology is actually being penalized, which is electricity generation with photovoltaic solar panels," the CNC warned in its findings.
The competition body added that while "this technology presents lower production costs than others, the efficiency of the system is being harmed and clients are being prevented, especially clients of a larger size that utilize electrical energy as an input, from reducing their costs. Consequently this reduces the competitiveness of the Spanish economy."
Popular content
The CNC warned authorities in its findings that consumers who produce part of their own energy are already paying a backup toll to the system through their existing connection to the public grid. "It is not reasonable to burden them with additional charges that are not required from other consumers," the commission declared.
Previously, the CNE also warned of negative consequences stemming from new government-proposed legislation for consumers who generate their own renewable energy and it expressed concern over the haste and lack of transparency in the process.
Spain's Council of Ministers in July approved the proposed reform of the national power sector in form of the controversial new draft law that will replace in its totality the country's existing law regulating the power sector.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.