The installation of photovoltaic panels on the roofs of buildings does not offer energy independence, but, on the contrary, makes consumers more dependent on the electricity grid from which they hoped to disconnect, said Andrei Ceclan, SERVELECT engineer, at the conference “Energy Transition Cluj-Napoca 2025”, organized by Energynomics together with the Romanian-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry – AHK Romania. Romania could even be at risk of blackout due to the large number of inverter brands that could be disconnected from the grid in the event of a cyber attack.
“Sure, an important marketing message is that if we put up billboards, we become independent. Far from true. On the contrary, we become even more dependent on the grid when we have installed panels on our roof, whether at home, school or factory. On the one hand, if we have a surplus and we want to send it to the grid to recover it or sell it, that is in the morning, in the evening and at night, when we have no sun, we want to take energy from the grid. So in no way are we becoming independent. It’s a nice story that attracts us to spend money on photovoltaics or to access grants,” explained Ceclan.
If 40-50 years ago Romania went through a massive electrification, extending the grids to the last villages (some of which are still not electrified), today another phenomenon is taking place. Consumers are feeding three, four, even five times more energy into the grid than they consume, and this has social effects. There are many vulnerable consumers and prosumers, who have invested in panels, cannot fully enjoy them. During the day, their excess PV not only increases the voltage on the grid, but the system can disconnect them. Nationwide, more than 20,000 of the 200,000 prosumers are disconnected in the middle of the day, Ceclan pointed out.
“All these prosumers already reach about 2 GW at peak summer production. In five years, they are expected to reach 3-4 GW. They are connected to the grid through about 20-25 brands of inverters, mostly from Asia, China. I did a test with my colleagues: technical support from an inverter manufacturer was asked to reset the inverter while it was producing power. The result: it disconnected from the grid. If a similar event were to happen to 200,000 prosumers due to a cyber attack on several inverter manufacturers, the effect would be a guaranteed blackout in Romania,” Ceclan said.
From his point of view, prosumers are vulnerable from both a cyber security and energy system security perspective and can seriously affect the grid. The energy market is changing, with high consumption in the morning and evening and low consumption during the day (due to prosumers) transforming the market at the national level, which creates the need for differentiated electricity prices and significant increases in energy consumption at the national level.
“The solution is not just storage but moving to small, distributed systems with prosumers becoming active grid users. We are training all customers where we install PV with energy storage and monitoring to become active users. Otherwise, the risk is that the prosumer becomes a ‘prostuser’: someone who invests but pays more and increases local energy insecurity compared to the previous situation, when he was just taking energy from the grid,” Ceclan concluded.
The conference “Energy Transition Cluj-Napoca 2025” was organized by Energynomics together with the Romanian-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry – AHK Romania, with the support of our partners: Elektra Renewable Support, BCR, Elnos, EnergoBit, Lemetal, MET Romania Energy, ThinkBlu Solution, Wiren.