Approximately 1.300 people from both the public and private sector subscribed to our webinar on collective self-consumption , representing a wide spectrum of the energy sector: electricity suppliers, utilities, installers, EPCs, financial institutions, local and national administrators, academia…

The webinar, organized by PylonData  and  ATA Insights, attracted a lot of interest, which was evident from the participation (more than 650 live attendants) and the engagement during the event.

The webinar brought together multi-disciplinary experts on the topic of collective self-consumption in Spain: Joan Herrera (from the municipality of El Prat), Albert Puig (from Rubí Brilla), Inigo Amoribierta (from OTOVO), Fátima Parejo Ramirez (from Electrica de Cadiz) and Cecilia Foronda Diez (from ECODES).

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You can watch a video summary of the webinar here.

If you want to receive our White Paper with more information about the status of collective self-consumption in Spain you can download it here.

Finally, you can test the tools offered by PylonData for utilities, municipalities and installers.

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The following lines offer a summary of the topics discussed.

Cecilia Foronda Diez (ECODES)

Cecilia Foronda Diez presented the project of Barrio Solar; a project run in collaboration with EDP, Ay/to de Zaragosa  and Fundacion Schneider Electric and the support of IDAE.

Barrio Solar is an initiative that wants to reach all the people in the neighborhood where it is installed, therefore, a percentage of the energy it generates goes to families in the neighborhood who are in a state of energy poverty without having to pay any monthly fee, simply benefiting from the savings in their bill that solar self-consumption generates.

A 100 kWp photovoltaic system will be installed on the roof of the municipal sports hall. This facility will serve 200 neighborhood participants located less than 500 meters from the facility. Of the 200 participants, 20 will be families in energy poverty selected by the municipal social services. The remaining 180 will be homes and businesses in the neighborhood.  After the first 15 years of its operation, the facility will become the property of the city council.

Cecilia highlighted that the project has several aspects, since the photovoltaic installation is not only about installing photovoltaics. In that sense ECODES follows a number of steps in the implementation of solar energy:

1. Promote the demand for self-consumption.
2. Installation of collective self-consumption, making use of the network
3. Participation of citizens and businesses.
4. Assignment of the renewable energy to vulnerable neighbors.
5. Improvement of energy efficiency in vulnerable homes
6. Creation of the Barrio Solar office – to increase the energy culture of the neighborhood. PyonData tools for self-consumption and energy efficiency will be used by ECODES to simplify the interactions and consultations with citizens.

Finally, Cecilia explained the benefits that are offered to all stakeholders surrounding the self-consumption installation, namely the citizens, the businesses, the vulnerable homes and the city council.

You can watch the entire presentation of Cecilia Foronda Diez, here.

Albert Puig (Rubí Brilla)

Albert Puig was representing the project Rubi Brilla which is a service offered by the municipality of Rubí, aimed at working for the energy (and ecological) transition of the city from the perspectives of savings, efficiency and renewable energies.

The presentation focused on the actions of Rubi Brilla that address the residential sector, and more specifically, the development of a project, named Community of Rubi Brilla that is implemented with the help of PylonData tools. 

The objectives of the project is to create a model of collaboration between private and public sector that allows the energy transition of the residential sector, having the economic savings as the main axis.

Rubi Brilla is in charge of designing the project and coordinating it with the objective of demonstrating its ability to offer economic savings.

To achieve that, Rubi Birlla want to show on one hand, that with the savings achieved you can allow the coverage of the different expenditures that the neighbors will pay and, on the other hand, to minimize costs either by an economy of scale or by the implementation of a contest that improves the competitiveness of the project.

Albert explained the four stages that are followed to create the communities in a way that offers enough time to elaborate, to assimilate the documentation and each community be able to decide whether it makes sense for them to continue to the next stage, or not. The whole process (all stages) have been running since June 2020 and will be completed within 2021.

• Stage 1: Expression of interest for communities
• Stage 2: Simulation of each community with PylonData tools, generating reports of energy efficiency and renewables for each community
• Stage 3: Competitions and synergies with private sector for each community
• Stage 4: Selection of winner company that will execute the different projects.

You can watch the entire presentation of Albert Puig, here.

Fátima Parejo Ramirez (Electrica de Cadiz) 

Fatima began her presentation by providing some background information on the Electrica de Cadiz, which acts both as an electricity supplier and as a local distributor, allowing them to analyze self-consumption from both perspectives.

The collective self-consumption line was put forward in 2019, when 9 photovoltaic plants (all owned by the municipality) were built on the roof of the distributor’s electrical substations. In January 2020 they began the self-consumption business line and for the next year they are planning to set up several energy communities in the municipality.

Fatima explained the role of Electrica de Cadiz in setting up “turnkey” projects for the interested clients. The electrical supplier takes care of the complete management of the projects, together with the client from the beginning.

Fátima also highlighted how Electrica de Cadiz is performing the sizing of the installation (during the design process) – done according to the real needs of the consumers and avoiding the over-sizing of the installation. For the optimal sizing of the installation – based on the customer’s real needs – Electrica de Cadiz is utilizing PylonData tools. 

Finally, Fátima offered some clarifications in regards to the compensation of the excess generated electricity and how they are shown in the electricity bills of the consumers.

You can watch the entire presentation of Fátima Parejo Ramirez, here.

 

Iñigo Amoribieta (OTOVO)

Iñigo began his presentation by offering some background information about OTOVO, that came from the north (Norway) and entered the Spanish market one year ago, focusing on the residential market. He highlighted the importance of simplifying the process for the clients, that are still very complicated and hard for them to understand – and offering credibility and security via the installation process of the PV plants.

He presented the results of a study carried out by OTOVO in order to understand what are the barriers in consumers’ perception for installing a PV plant. 

According to their study, for every 100 people that are interested in self-consumption 96 of them do not go through with the installation and there are 2 fundamental reasons for (not) doing so:

1. The financial barrier of the upfront cost for their investment – 57% of the respondents
2. The useful lifetime of the solar panels will be lower than expected – 20% of the respondents

In terms of what consumers find most attractive for installing solar panels, economic savings continues to be the main reason when betting on this type of facilities (44.6%), followed by energy independence (29.7%) and the fight against climate change (20.3%)

In order to tackle both of the predominant doubts of the potential clients, OTOVO launched their renting program, which allows their clients to avoid the upfront costs of solar installations and also takes out the perceived risk of the operation of the plant throughout its lifetime. In this way, the client does not have to face that initial investment and with the savings that you see on the bill, this rent is re-paid or paid in such a way that it is in the long term we take care of these rentals for 20 years ensuring that the system is working.

Finally, Iñigo explained the importance of simplifying the process for the customer with technology, which OTOVO does in five steps:

1. The client goes online and inserts their postal code and select the main characteristics of their house.
2. The platform carries out a study based on the actual consumption of the client with the help of PylonData tools. 
3. Otovo offers to the consumer the best available option and most efficient service of installation.
4. The client chooses the type of financing (buying, or renting).
5. Otovo carries out the whole process for installation and the after-sales maintenance.

You can watch the entire presentation of Iñigo Amoribieta, here. 

 

Joan Herrera (Municipality of El Prat)

Joan Herrera begun his presentation by offering some background information about the characteristics of El Prat municipality and its citizens: a metropolitan city 65 thousand inhabitants between the port and the airport of Barcelona two great energy monsters, with little photovoltaic cover but with industrial zones very oriented to logistics and therefore with production capacity but not so much consumption. Furthermore, the socioeconomic profile is predominantly that  of committed working people but with a purchasing power that makes collective investments more difficult.

Joan depicted the case of self-consumption as a pretext to articulate citizenship, however, he emphasized that the definition of storage and demand aggregation strategies, will allow the mobilization of  private capital for the benefit of the citizens in a time horizon of 5 or 6 years.

What is clear is that this citizen community energy is based on the participation in social and environmental benefits and the most interesting thing is that it can become an analytical actor with hardly any limits on supply in consumption, in demand aggregation, in storage and even in distribution.

As Joan explained, for the municipality of El Prat the approach is neither bottom-up nor top-down but a combination of both, epitomized by the following actions:

1. The house of energy: providing advice to citizens, businesses, communities in a form of an energy office.
2. Online platform for the analysis and optimization of the contracted power of citizens – carried out by PylonData tools. It is a way to insert the energy discussion in homes.
3. The energy map of the city: in which energy consumption information per building is provided to incentivize interventions in less efficient buildings.
4. Collective self-consumption islands: More than 1 MWp in total installed in 23 municipal roofs, creating 5 islands of collective self consumption throughout the municipality. Each of these islands has been designed in order for the excess electricity generated to be overlapped by vulnerable families in the neighborhood. For this process, PylonData tools were used to simulate the distribution of energy among the participating consumers and maximize the self-consumed energy (or minimize the surpluses).
5. Sharing energy: A proposal for the urban fabric set by the city council putting out certain projects to tender for both public and private spaces, accounting to an additional 1 MWp.
6. New neighborhoods, new realities: The proposal is to marry energy transition and urban development by creating a new neighborhood with 4100 homes, and the possibility of developing energy charges with: a) Generation; b) Storage; c) A bidirectional and digitized network.
7. Shared mobility, charge for the community: A shared vehicle scheme comprised of 8 charging points and 6-8 shared EV, acting also as a source for horizontal V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid).

You can watch the entire presentation of Joan Herrera, here. 

Register for our White Paper on Collective Self-Consumption 

If you want to receive our White Paper with more information about the status of collective self-consumption in Spain you can download it here.

In this guide you will be able to access clear information on the variables that you must take into consideration to carry out your collective self-consumption project. 

Find out more about PylonData here. 

Test the tools offered by PylonData for utilities, municipalities and installers.

 

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