While dry water reservoirs are running with higher electricity prices and small-scale solar producers are doing well, large-scale manufacturers have to pull back on solar energy under current rules.
Today’s regulations in Norway open the way for so-called ‘plus customers’, solar cell manufacturers that produce more than they need, to sell surplus power back to the net.
With this year’s extreme solar conditions and high electricity prices, many people benefit from it, according to Tekniske Ukeblad newspaper. But the moment a manufacturer supplies more than 100 kilowatts of power to the mains, they switch to another category and have to pay an annual feed tariff, which can be expensive. To avoid it, several major solar energy producers will have turned off the production of environmentally friendly energy this summer.
“We have had overproduction for parts of the week every single week this summer. Thus,we have had to extinguish power generation. And I think it’s quite sad to produce green power that nobody gets to use’’, said Lars Erik Olsen, technical manager at Asko’s cold store in Vestby, which has Norway’s largest solar system on the roof.
They expect to have shed power for a six-digit amount this summer.
However, the Regulatory Authority for Energy at NVE stated that amendments to the rules for plus customers were adopted in July. This means that solar systems that feed more than 100 kilowatts from the new year will not pay the fixed feed tariff up to 19,300 kroner, but instead pay 1.3 øre per kilowattime for the current fed into the mains.
© NTB scanpix / #Norway Today
