According to recently amended Law on the Use of Renewable Energy Sources, Serbian households which want to become prosumers will not be able to connect solar power plants of over 6.9 kW, while the maximum capacity for companies will be 150 kW.
Some experts believe that the limiting the capacity could seriously slow down the solar boom in Serbia.
The Energy Ministry, however, says that the aim of the limiting is to optimize the investment of a household in line with the real annual consumption.
The amendment to the regulation should enable an adequate distribution, so that everybody who wants to can connect, without burdening the energy system.
Currently, there are no limitations to the capacity of solar panels, so prosumers can connect solar panels whose total capacity is equal to the power of the connection to the network that has been approved by distribution system operator EDS.
According to EDS’s data, over 800 solar panels are installed in Serbia on houses and around 230 more on companies’ facilities. The average capacity in households is around 8.2 kW, and around 27.5 kW for companies. At the moment, the biggest connected power plant on a household has nearly 47 kW, and on a company nearly 1 MW.
The Ministry said that they key change compared to the existing law is that the amendments achieve a balance between two equally important public interests: the integration of renewable energy sources into the system and the ensuring of secure operations of the electrical energy system.
The existing solution envisages for the prosumers to be able to connect to the electricity system without limitations, whereby their responsibility toward it is fully excluded. They have no balance responsibility, they enjoy the right to priority access, they are not obliged to take part in providing side services. In the European practice, the prosumers’ capacity is limited due to such privileges, mostly to small amounts (below 400 kW).
This is especially important in the context of the total number of the submitted requests for the connection of variable renewable energy sources at the operators of the transmission and distribution systems, in the amount of 20,000 MW, which exceeds the capacities of the national electricity network from the angle of flexibility, that is, the available regulation reserve necessary for secure and smooth operations of the electrical energy system.
