More and more Czech apartment buildings are embracing electricity sharing. Consent from half of owners is enough

For more than a year now, apartment owners in homeowners’ associations in apartment buildings have been able to share the electricity they generate. Photovoltaics on the roof therefore do not have to supply only common areas, but can also provide electricity to individual flats. The number of interested parties has grown over the past year.

Since January last year, it has been possible to share electricity within a single apartment building. This was enabled by an amendment to the decree on electricity market rules. With the arrival of community energy this summer, interested parties have seen further changes.

As of 1 August, when the Electricity Data Centre (EDC) began operations, apartment buildings no longer register with their distribution network operator but directly with the data centre. Information on the registration procedure can be found on the EDC website.

Apartment buildings already sharing electricity must re-register with the EDC in the same way as a new community is established. If a building does not manage to do so by the end of the year, the supplier will terminate the sharing arrangement itself.

These installations are beginning to appear in more places across Czechia. “In our distribution area, we have recorded 16 operational electricity-sharing projects within apartment buildings,” says Lubomír Budný, spokesperson for the E.ON Group, which also includes distribution company EG.D. E.ON supplies electricity to 1.5 million customers, mainly in South Bohemia, South Moravia and the Vysočina Region. It also manages more than 67 thousand kilometres of power lines in the southern part of the country.

Interest only began to grow towards the end of 2023. “For most of last year, we recorded only a handful of applications. Last summer, there were approximately three projects. Interest began to rise towards the end of last year and especially in the first half of this year,” Budný adds.

Financial savings without distribution charges

A shared photovoltaic system reduces energy costs both for the building as a whole and, in part, for individual flats. It also helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, electricity generated within a single building reaches the flats through shared wiring and is therefore exempt from distribution charges.

Apartment buildings can receive support for acquiring photovoltaics through subsidies under the New Green Savings programme. It can cover up to half of the necessary costs.

“The principle of community sharing in an apartment building is financially advantageous because it does not require any major intervention in the building’s technical infrastructure,” explains Martina Hlaváčová Hupková, commercial director of Enado, a company which, among other things, installs photovoltaics on apartment buildings.

Enado’s projects include photovoltaic power plants on an older apartment building in Luby, in the Cheb area, and on an eight-storey building in Kopřivnice. The company worked on the installations with manufacturer DZ Dražice. “The planned dynamic allocation key should further increase the efficiency of energy use: if I do not use the electricity, a neighbour can use it, so that as much of the electricity generated as possible actually remains in the building,” Hlaváčová Hupková adds.

Calculator shows whether sharing pays off

The first important step for those interested is to determine whether acquiring photovoltaics is worthwhile for the building. “It cannot be generalised to specific types of apartment buildings, as it depends on many factors. These include the consumption of individual flats, contracted distribution tariffs, the size of the photovoltaic system that can be installed on the building, and the method of water heating and space heating in individual flats, among other things,” explains Lubomír Budný of E.ON.

The size of the power plant is particularly crucial and depends on many factors. Unused electricity can be stored in a battery or sold to the grid. “Under the current legislative conditions, it can be said that it is always most advantageous to consume the electricity generated on site within a single main building switchboard, or rather within one apartment building,” Budný adds.

The importance of correctly selecting the plant’s capacity is also highlighted by Mikuláš Bindzar, technical director at Enado. “Every apartment building is different, so a project must be tailored to the number of housing units, their consumption, and the size and type of building, or rather the size of the roof, which limits the options for installing panels,” Bindzar adds.

For interested parties, distribution operator EG.D has prepared a calculator for electricity sharing in apartment buildings. It allows them to easily check whether shared photovoltaics will pay off for them.

At the same time, the application will suggest possible forms of the solution. “The calculator’s outputs will also serve clients as supporting materials for the further steps required for the actual implementation and establishment of an energy community in the building,” says David Šafář, a member of EG.D’s board of directors.

The form only requires information on the building’s consumption and location, as well as the tariffs and electricity commodity prices of all metering points and the technical parameters for installing photovoltaics.

It is also necessary to determine whether the generating source can be connected to the local distribution grid. Supplier EG.D enables clients to do this using a connection availability map.

E.ON will also offer its own installations

Since August, E.ON has operated a new webpage where customers can find answers to questions about sharing and contacts for experts.

Apartment buildings can purchase turnkey photovoltaic systems directly from E.ON. The company will arrange all necessary documents, the connection agreement and commissioning itself. It will establish the energy community and handle the required paperwork.

“Besides advising applicants on energy sharing and arranging their registrations, we are working on other products and services related to energy sharing that we want to offer clients during the autumn,” adds Kateřina Stehlíková, head of Product Innovation at E.ON Energie.

If a photovoltaic power plant is suitable for a particular apartment building, the owners need to agree on its acquisition. This depends primarily on how many of them are interested. To start sharing, it is now sufficient for half of the owners to agree, unless the homeowners’ association’s statutes provide otherwise. Reaching an agreement is easier than in the past, when all owners had to consent.

“Not all flat owners in a given homeowners’ association need to participate in sharing. The specific conditions for sharing are set out in the rules established by the Electricity Data Centre, so we recommend following them,” clarifies E.ON spokesperson Budný.

Amendments to the Energy Act approved in the past have simplified the entire process. If the power plant has a capacity of up to 50 kilowatts, which is the range of typical installations, no building permit is required.

For a power plant of this size, apartment buildings also do not need to obtain a licence from the Energy Regulatory Office. In addition, homeowners’ association income from sales is not taxed if it is below 30 thousand crowns per flat.

The allocation key determines who receives the electricity

Once there is agreement within the building, the next step is to find a suitable contractor and install the generating source. It is also necessary to arrange verification of the generation source; it must be authorised to feed electricity into the grid and have an offtake agreement in place. An apartment building can only begin sharing after registering with the EDC.

The apartment building appoints a sharing group administrator, who will be responsible for the whole process, and establishes a so-called allocation key. This will be used to distribute the electricity generated among the housing units.

“The panels on the roof are shared, but the method of distributing the electricity generated depends on the agreement. It can be divided fairly in equal shares according to the number of housing units, or according to another key, for example based on the floor area of the flats,” explains Enado technical director Mikuláš Bindzar.

Conventional electricity meters must also be replaced with smart meters. Based on a request from the EDC, the distribution operator will verify whether interval meters are installed in the given apartment building. “By law, we have three months for the replacement, but we will work according to available capacity and, unless there is some rapid surge, we will certainly meet this deadline,” Lubomír Budný adds.

Republished from the online portal EkoNews.cz, a website covering business and sustainability.