{"id":22537,"date":"2015-09-21T00:01:26","date_gmt":"2015-09-20T22:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.olino.org\/us\/?p=22537"},"modified":"2015-09-19T18:33:37","modified_gmt":"2015-09-19T16:33:37","slug":"generation-kwh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olino.org\/blog\/us\/articles\/2015\/09\/21\/generation-kwh\/","title":{"rendered":"Generation kWh by citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"<\/a>It all started with 157 people, founders of Som Energia, in December 2010 with the aim to jointly produce and consume their own renewable energy. In January 2011 work started to obtain all necessary permits for selling electricity started and by October \u00a0the service was launched, initially for just a few hundred clients.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

How the projects started<\/h4>\n

At the same time, new production projects were reviewed. This turned out to be relatively easy. Due to the economic crisis and the legal uncertainties for renewable energy projects in Spain, many project developers were looking to sell some projects, developed on paper, waiting for construction. As hardly any buyers were around, banks were not financing anything, negotiations were relatively easy. Finally a first PV project of 100 kW on an industrial building in Lleida was selected. Building started early 2012 and by April it was fully functional. Consequently 8 other projects were selected and build leading to a portfolio of 732 kWp solar and a 500 kW biogas plant. The total investment amounted to 3.5 million Euro. Around 1100 of our members participated. Collecting the money started in June 2012 and within 10 months we were fully funded. All these investments kept us pretty busy until the beginning of 2014. At that time we were less than 10 people in the office for all the tasks on hand.<\/p>\n

\"Power<\/a><\/p>\n

The goverment changed the rules during the game<\/h4>\n

Then, the government decided that Spain had more than enough renewable projects and could not afford paying any more F<\/strong>eed I<\/strong>nn T<\/strong>ariffs<\/strong>, so no more projects were going to be accepted, leading to a full stop in new project development, continuing up to today. Also, despite a unanimous parliamentary (taken a few weeks before the 2012 election\u2026.) decision to quickly implement self consumption legislation , nothing is still in place, almost four years later. \u00a0There is a small legal loophole so it is not impossible but reality is that only a few hundred pioneers have put solar panels on their roof. The government tactics have been to delay coming up with anything practical and fair. So we are currently (Summer 2015) looking at legal proposal #3, with no net balance and a \u00b4solidarity tax\u00b4 which makes you pay for all kWh you produce yourself, even the ones your use yourself instantaneously and so never enter the grid! \u00a0So this road to increase self production for our members which has created so much enthusiasm and citizen participation in other countries was firmly closed.<\/p>\n

With the two main mechanisms for increasing renewable production basically blocked we started to look around for inspiration at other initiatives in Europe. What other ways would there be to increase renewable production?<\/p>\n

One initiative that stood out was the model from De Windcentrale <\/a>in The Netherlands. We liked their model where people directly invest in a windturbine and get a return in kWh with the financial return depending on the difference between a standard price and their own production price. We met with the founders of De Windcentrale in Amsterdam, exchanged information and got a feel of where we needed to go. This was December 2013.<\/p>\n

So how could we create a model :<\/h4>\n