For this reason, the European Commission, in its recast of the renewable energy (Renewable Energy Directive II) set a goal of increasing the share of renewable energy sources (RES) to at least 32 percent by 2030 in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent compared to 1990 levels. Under the Green Deal, this target was increased to 50 percent. To reach the 32 percent RE target in 2030, about 21 percent of Europe's electricity production would need to be generated by photovoltaic systems, which would require about three times the 2018 capacity.
While this is a huge leap, a recent study estimates that nearly 25 percent of current electricity consumption in the EU could be generated by rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems alone. The electricity would be either fully or partially consumed on-site, matching supply and demand.
Untapped potential of jointly generated PV electricity
Unfortunately, self-consumption is limited to owners or tenants of single-family homes in most countries. Since the roofs of multi-family dwellings account for a large percentage of the total available roof area, there is largely untapped potential for self-consumption of jointly generated PV electricity. Administrative regulations (including building codes, for example, regarding. fire protection), technical regulations (smart meter rollout obligation and metering point operation obligation), and electricity laws (full power supply obligation and various reporting obligations to distribution system operators, transmission system operators, and the Federal Network Agency) for self-consumption in these buildings are a major barrier to widespread adoption of on-site consumption PV power, complicating implementation and significantly reducing the financial attractiveness for owners.
Making matters worse, a large proportion of existing rooftop PV installations in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, and Spain will face similar problems with the phase-out of fixed feed-in tariffs in the coming years. In particular, the millions of fully functional smaller PV systems on private homes could hardly be operated economically and face an uncertain future, with the risk of being shut down.
New energy sharing concepts
New energy sharing concepts, which enable shared decentralized consumption of decentrally generated renewable electricity, could make it possible to operate all these rooftop PV systems economically. Moreover, such sharing concepts would have additional advantages:
- Community-optimized power generation also means that more and larger PV systems and storage can be installed than if the power supply were limited to self-consumption.
- Cost-effective electricity sourced from a neighboring PV system is a credible and positively recognized benefit to local residents and promotes general acceptance of renewable energy generation and the energy transition within society.
- Socially disadvantaged people, without their own capital, are no longer excluded from the financial benefits of the energy transition, but can actively participate by using affordable and local green electricity.
- A decentralized generation of electricity from renewable sources relieves the power grid and enables a more cost-effective energy transition.
Right to energy sharing
To encourage the creation of such communities, the European Union has enshrined the right to energy sharing in Article 21 of its revised Renewable Energy Directive. However, opportunities to do so are still limited in practice. One solution to this is the concept of energy sharing hardware from Pionierkraft GmbH . The energy-sharing hardware is designed to share energy without using the public grid and make the collaborative use of renewable energy economical.
Since April 2020, the prototype is currently being tested at various locations and applications. The energy sharing solution enables the direct physical exchange of self-generated renewable energy within and between small single-family and multi-family homes in an economical and user-friendly manner. This fills the existing gap for economical PV solutions in smaller residential buildings. For the first time, battery storage can be used cooperatively and PV projects for multiple users can be implemented economically. This increases the amount of energy consumed and produced locally, and more people have access to affordable and clean electricity.
The heart of the solution implements the first standards-compliant AC/AC coupling of low-voltage grids. It allows different households to be connected directly without relying on the public power grid, eliminating grid fees and administrative burdens. Depending on energy generation and consumption, it transfers self-generated energy between two or more households. Various intelligent control algorithms interact with the embedded software to autonomously regulate the flow of energy. This means that only as much energy is delivered:
- as a consumer needs at a given time, because receiving more energy than needed would lead to illegal injection into the grid by the consumer,
- as available after the producer's own consumption. Transmitting more energy than is available would cause the producer to purchase that additional amount of electricity from its utility at a higher cost.
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