The Spanish government wants to impose new fees on consumers that use batteries to store electric power produced by their own solar panels.
In early June, the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism released a draft of proposed legislation designed to discourage the use of solar charged batteries by people who produce their own electricity.
Under the proposed legislation, consumers that owned small solar-plus-storage systems would be forced to pay about $10 per kilowatt (kW) of installed capacity. In the residential sector, the fee would nearly double the payback period from 16 years to about 31 years for solar plus storage systems. Consumers that owned larger solar-plus-storage systems (i.e., > 15 kW) would be charged about $41 per kW.
To add insult to injury, the proposed legislation also says that anyone who violates the self-consumption rules would be subject to fines of as much as $68 million. To put this in perspective, the $68 million fine is double the size of the maximum fine allowed for leaking radioactive nuclear waste, according to an analysis by PV Tech.
The fee would not apply to off-grid solar plus storage systems or instantaneous consumption of power generated by solar equipment.
Even with these limitations, the proposed legislation would effectively destroy the Spanish market for cutting-edge products like Tesla’s Powerwall battery if it is approved.
For the past five years, the Spanish government has aggressively rolled back subsidies for renewable energy technologies. The impact has been especially adverse for the solar power industry.
In 2011, the Emirate of Abu Dhabi threatened to sue Spain for reducing financial support for solar thermal energy projects. Meanwhile, Spain’s Supreme Court recently rejected a lawsuit brought by more than a dozen major solar developers against the Spanish government for cutting solar subsidies.
