Municipal utilities demand regional marketing of solar power

18.03.2025

Source: E & M powernews

The regional marketing of solar power could make the energy supply more stable and cheaper. This is the conclusion of a study commissioned by Stadtwerke Speyer and Trier.

The legal framework for the marketing of solar power, including from smaller generation plants, needs to be reformed. This is what the municipal utilities of Speyer and Trier are calling for. They are backing up their call for the regional marketing of solar power with a study they commissioned from the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility (IKEM) in Berlin.

One of the key findings is that a new legal framework for decentralized and regional marketing models could make the energy supply more stable and cheaper. Because with a change, a considerable amount of green electricity would be spared from being reclassified as gray electricity.

This happens when private electricity from small solar installations is fed into the public grid because the producers cannot consume it directly or store it. When the solar power is sold by the transmission system operators (TSOs) on the electricity exchange, the energy volumes are automatically stamped as gray electricity of unknown origin. The Ikem study sees marketing by the TSOs on the spot market as a "wasted opportunity" for the local energy transition.

Local price signals alleviate grid bottlenecks and promote storage

According to Arndt Müller, CEO of Stadtwerke Trier, the solar power produced is "no longer available for regional value creation". Wolfgang Bühring, Managing Director of Stadtwerke Speyer, is therefore also in favor of a model for regional electricity marketing from wind and solar power. To this end, the infrastructure needs to be adapted, local cooperation intensified and the legal framework for the marketing of electricity from renewable energies further developed.

According to the utilities, a climate-neutral, sector-linked energy system would benefit from regional electricity marketing. The cooperating municipal utilities also see local price signals as an economic incentive to reduce grid bottlenecks and promote the use of storage systems.

The authors of the study question the fact that EEG-subsidized renewable energy plants are prohibited from issuing guarantees of origin. The aim should be to design the certificates according to clear criteria. In this context, the analysis ascribes a key role to regional green electricity marketing.

Basic suppliers should be allowed to market regional electricity

Their proposal is to allow basic suppliers to market electricity from small solar plants locally. This would allow the electricity to go directly to consumers in the area who are "already tied into the expensive basic supply tariff".

Other proposals in the study include

• a reform of grid charges at federal level in line with the polluter-pays principle, for fair and market-based cost structures
• the system-friendly use of electricity storage systems with the aim of enabling the flexible and cost-effective use of batteries by distribution grid operators and local market participants
• linking the expansion of battery storage systems to local price signals to be created, which could also reduce redispatch costs

Overall, decentrally generated electricity could be put to good use locally in sector coupling. The analysts expect their proposals to have a significant dampening effect on electricity prices. Local marketing would ultimately lead to cheaper electricity for consumers in the production area.

The study "Regional marketing of PV electricity" can be downloaded from the Stadtwerke Speyer website.

Author: Volker Stephan