February 20, 2024
Source: Energy & Management Powernews
Prosuming still offers enormous potential for the expansion of renewables, according to the BDEW. How these opportunities can be better exploited is the subject of a new paper from the association.
"Shaping the decentralized energy transition - enabling prosuming" is the title of BDEW's new paper, which aims to promote the participation of private individuals, trade and industry in the development of decentralized generation plants.
"There are already a large number of innovative technical solutions for efficient energy generation, storage and use in companies, buildings or at energy generation sites," says Kerstin Andreae, Managing Director of the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW). "However, these are hardly being realized under the current legal and regulatory framework."
New rights, but also obligations
A study conducted by Fraunhofer ISE and Energy Brainpool on behalf of BDEW, which examined a range of possible applications, also highlighted the great potential of prosuming. To leverage this potential, BDEW has now published 14 recommendations for action. These include:
1. simplifying the implementation of larger prosuming applications, such as entire neighborhoods, apartment buildings or commercial enterprises. A key building block for this is the possibility of concluding individual contracts between electricity suppliers and customers for self-supply behind a defined grid connection point at a connection outside the public electricity grid, thus enabling "collective self-supply".
2. Enabling prosumers to provide flexibility for distribution grid operators
3. Larger prosuming applications must contribute to the transparency and system stability of the energy system in the long term. Operators who want to offer flexibility would one day have to report a schedule to the distribution system operator from 100 kW. This would allow the DSO to integrate the forecast feed-in or grid consumption of the prosuming application into its grid operation planning
4. Prosumers should be able to participate even more in the markets that exist today and will emerge in the future and provide services for third parties, such as the grid or the energy system as a whole. Such ancillary services (AS) should be incentivized on the market as a voluntary service if this is economically efficient.
5. In principle, all prosumers must comply with the Technical Connection Guidelines (TAR). In addition, they can contribute to grid stability so that this is ensured at all times, even with high prosuming shares in the energy supply system.
6. Acceleration of the smart meter rollout
7. Use of prosuming for sector coupling technologies
8. Incentives to accelerate the market ramp-up of decentralized sector coupling and to achieve a high critical mass of flexible consumption systems that allow the PV potential on commercial roofs to be fully exploited
9. Improved use of storage, for example through the reform of the exclusivity principle for energy storage
10. Possibility of dispensing with calibrated measuring equipment and subsequent regulations within a prosumer cell
11. Simplified metering point operation in prosuming applications, such as for tenant electricity or shared building supply
12. The elimination of the EEG surcharge has rendered the distinction between self-supply and third-party supply in the EEG obsolete. However, the equal treatment of self-supply and third-party supply is still relevant for other electrified areas and should be implemented as quickly as possible in the opinion of BDEW. This includes, for example, an electricity tax exemption for the charging of third-party e-vehicles in shared parking spaces
13. Expansion of the grid infrastructure required for the collection, distribution and transportation of the electricity generated at the greatest possible speed
14. Creation of a level playing field for all end consumers supplied in whole or in part by the public grid. Prosumers should also participate appropriately in the costs of the energy supply system, such as grid costs, secured power and system services, so that the infrastructure retains a stable financing basis even with a highly prosumer-oriented energy system
The detailed recommendations for action from BDEW are available online.
The study by Fraunhofer ISE and Energy Brainpool on behalf of BDEW on the potential and framework conditions for the expansion of prosuming from 2022 is also still available online. The repositioning is based on the results of this study.
Author: Katia Meyer-Tien
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