Producing electricity from renewable energy sources contributes to climate protection, increases the country’s autonomy and allows the production to be used in several ways.
In addition to the benefits of selling the energy produced and fed into the network, self-consumption is both economic and ecological. It allows renewable electricity to be consumed when it is available, thus avoiding the need to rely on the network to deliver the energy needed and avoiding all the costs associated with supplying electricity from the network. This makes the citizen less dependent on network supply and the vagaries of market prices, while at the same time providing the assurance of being able to benefit from the networks when needed. In this context, self-consumed renewable electricity is not subject to any charges or fees: neither the network usage tariff, nor the contribution to the compensation mechanism or the electricity tax are applied to self-consumed electricity.
Producing and consuming your own electricity therefore has several advantages, both for you and for the community.
In general, but even more so in times of high energy market prices, it is almost always financially advantageous to install a photovoltaic power plant and to consume as much of the electricity produced as possible by shifting consumption to the times when the plant is producing, i.e. when the sun is shining. The advantage for the self-consumer is that they are able to benefit from electricity that they have produced themselves produced for which the unit cost is lower than the price of electricity purchased on the markets and delivered through the network. In addition, it is 100% produced from renewable sources.
Furthermore, it is important to remember the beneficial effects for the community. Firstly, the production of electricity from renewable sources reduces climate change emissions and dependence on fossil fuels and/or imported energy. In addition, the ability to shift consumption to times when on-site renewable generation is abundant reduces the load on the network, both because the generation does not have to be fully absorbed by the network and because the displaced consumption reduces the load at other times.
Under these conditions, self-consumption therefore makes an important contribution to energy transition.
Nevertheless, to make an active contribution to climate protection, we must remain attentive to our energy consumption. Just because it’s cheap or we can produce it ourselves doesn’t mean we should waste it. Overall, our country is still heavily dependent on energy imports from abroad and every surplus kWh fed into the network contributes to the country’s self-sufficiency and reduces dependence on fossil fuels. This means that’s important to take care to avoid the “rebound effect” increasing one’s own level of consumption when producing electricity oneself, thereby decreasing the benefits to the community. It would be unfortunate if the ability to generate one’s own renewable electricity was used to justify increased consumption. Renewable electricity remains a valuable resource, it is always advisable to ensure that energy is used in a responsible manner.