Romania: Green Energy on Apartment Blocks

Installing photovoltaic panels in condominiums in Romania can be a real challenge, given the difficulty of obtaining permits and authorizations. But to increase the impact of solar we must also promote a community attitude on energy and ecological issues

(Originally published by our project partner PressOne )

There are about 100 000 apartment blocks in Romania that could produce green energy, according to the National Institute of Statistics. The solution lies in installing photovoltaic panels on the terraces of blocks of flats to capture and convert solar energy into electricity. In reality, however, people who want to do this face a number of hurdles, from the lack of a national programme to cover the cost of the investment to authorities passing the buck.

How do the panels get mounted on the terrace of the block? Is it safe to place them on the roof? Who benefits from the energy produced and, more importantly, how are the costs shared? These are questions PressOne has tried to answer after talking to several building consumers.

The first man in Oltenia with panels on his block 

Iulian lives with his family in a block built in the 1980s in Râmnicu Vâlcea. As there is no local heating plant in the village except for heating, he used a boiler for hot water.

"I always ended up paying more than 600 lei a month for electricity," says Iulian, who calls himself the first person in Oltenia with photovoltaic panels on his block.

In September 2022, he decided he wanted to install photovoltaic panels on the roof of his apartment block for his own consumption, so he applied to become a prosumer. That's when the adventure with the authorities began.

"I filed the paperwork, after which the distribution company told me that, under the Civil Code, I had to have the association's notarial acceptance. I got the block president, went to the notary, got the notarial acceptance and sent it. That's not enough! You need the consent of all the tenants," recalls Iulian. 

From one institution to another 

The block where the man lives consists of seven staircases and over 100 tenants and it would have been almost impossible for him to get everyone's consent. So he applied to the National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE) and the National Authority for Consumer Protection to resolve his situation. According to the reply from ANRE, the man would have been entitled to install the panels on the block with the agreement of 50% plus 1 of the tenants.

"I collected even more signatures. All the neighbours on the 4th floor, where I live, have given their notarial consent, and for the others I called a scale meeting and got their consent on the basis of a roll call. Especially since we agreed not to put more than 3 kW, so that everyone has room if they want. However, since then and until now no one has asked permission to put up panels," says the man.

After he had all the signatures of the neighbours, he went back to the distribution company to conclude the prosumer contract: "they rejected me and sent me back to ANRE, where they told me to go back to the distributor, that I was right".

After an audience with the distribution company, Iulian managed to conclude the connection contract. But when it came to the supply contract, the scenario repeated itself. It was only in March 2023, more than six months later, that the man managed to become a prosumer and produce and consume energy from renewable sources. He made the entire investment out of his own pocket, 24,000 lei, paid in instalments of 2,000 lei per month, and has not paid a single cent for energy bills for almost a year.

"I also had a property at home, but I went for the block option, because in the country there are transformers that don't support much energy. In a block, especially where there are commercial premises on the ground floor, there are consumers of energy day and night and you don't have a problem of overloading the networks," says Iulian.

According to Dumitru Luță, president of the Association of Small Electricity Producers in Romania, the law does not prohibit the installation of photovoltaic panels for own consumption on the block, especially since the roof area is divided by the number of dwellings in that block. But very few people choose to install panels on the roof of their block for their own use. More common are cases where the panels are installed by a tenants' association and the energy is used by the community.

Shared electricity for the stairwell light 

Ioana is the president of a homeowners' association in Sector 3 of the capital. In December 2022, she registered the block, built in 1977, in a project launched by the Sector 3 City Hall "Consume smart, use green energy". According to the specifications, the block would have benefited, through the project carried out by the city council with its own funds, from the installation of photovoltaic panels for electricity production, the replacement of lifts and heat pumps. The latter would convert the energy captured by the panels into heat energy.

90% of the investment was to be covered by money from the municipality, with the association contributing 10%. Ioana calculated that this meant that each apartment would have to pay 1,600 lei.

"We called the general meeting to ask for their consent. It took about a month to agree. In February we submitted the project and a month later we were notified that we had been selected," says Ioana.

The eight-storey block currently has 489 photovoltaic panels mounted on the terrace.

"All that remains to be done is to connect the electrical panels on the ground floor, which serve the common parts, because all the energy will be used only in the common, not by individual owners," explains Ioana.

Unlike Iulian's case, the energy produced by the panels installed on the block in Sector 3 will be used for the common areas: for lighting or air conditioning on the staircase, for the elevator, but also for the production of hot water for the whole block, using heat pumps.

As with any prosumer, the amount of energy not directly consumed will be financially compensated by the supplier after 24 months of non-use. In the case of a tenants' association, this money can be used to pay for other expenses or investments in the block.

While there are national funding programmes for individuals and companies installing photovoltaic power plants, such as the "Green House Photovoltaic" programme managed by the Environmental Fund Administration, this does not apply to blocks. Owners' associations cannot apply for funding from the AFM.

The blocks that have been thermally rehabilitated with funds from the PNRR will also benefit from photovoltaic panels. For example, the mayor of Sector 4 in Bucharest boasted at the beginning of the year that he had started installing the panels on blocks that had been rehabilitated through the PNRR, and the mayor of Sector 3 invited interested owners' associations to send an e-mail to the town hall.

The building belongs to everyone, why invest in it?

EntreVecini is an NGO that, in 2022, "raffled" the chance to install a photovoltaic plant for a housing association. More than 80 housing associations signed up for the project at the time, and the winner was one in Sector 6, which became a prosumer in December 2022.

The most difficult part of installing photovoltaic panels on a block is getting neighbours to agree, says Mihai Toader-Pasti, founder of EntreVecini, an association that aims to create solar-powered neighbourhood communities.

"It costs money. You have to give some money now and amortize your investment cost in a few years, 2, 3 depends. There are some years in between and the question for everyone is why do I do this. In Romania, in the vast majority of situations, with that money you can do anything other than invest in panels on the block, because the block belongs to everyone. People still do this with their houses, because they say 'yes, it's still mine, it's my house and if I sell it, I'll sell it with panels'," says Mihai.

There are solutions, but they take time, especially as people are in a hurry and don't understand the benefits of installing panels on their block. That's why, with the association he founded, he goes to people and tries to explain the situation. For example, that the terraces of the blocks, if they have been properly executed, will not be affected at all by the installation of the panels.

"They are very light (10 kg/m2). If the terrace has been designed and executed correctly, i.e. to hold a man, these panels are lighter than a man. Especially if the terrace is straight on the block," explains the founder of EntreVecini.

Individual vs. communal 

Just as Iulian installed photovoltaic panels on the roof of his apartment block to produce electricity for individual use, so could his other neighbours. So PressOne asked the experts if it would be practically possible.

"In principle it can. If you want to use it for individual consumption and become a prosumer today, you have to connect the panels to an inverter, which has to go to your apartment, to the meter," explains Mihai Toader-Pasti. 

Let's imagine a block with 20 apartments. If each owner decides to go with the individual model, at the end of the day there will be 20 inverters, 20 prosumer contracts, 20 cables and 20 fuses in the block.

"That's super fragmentation, which doesn't really make sense. Economically it's not the best solution. A better solution might be to have a single inverter," adds the EntreVecini founder. Tenants can organise themselves as energy cooperatives or energy communities.

Basically, explains Mihai from EntreVecini, one of the tenants invests some money in the installation of the system, and the money is returned to him in proportion to the investment made. It's similar to investing in a small company, only now the company is the block that produces energy from green sources.

Ciolacu government promises 

PressOne also talked about what it means to be a prosumer in Romania, when it reviewed the biggest dysfunctions in the production, consumption and distribution of renewable energy.

If then, according to data provided by the National Energy Regulatory Authority, the number of Romanian prosumers reached 77,638, in December 2023 - according to statements made by ANRE president Grigore Niculescu in a press conference - the number of prosumers exceeded 101,000, with a total installed capacity of 1,298 MW.

"We made this comparison at the beginning of our mandate, with Cernavodă, here we are going to surpass two nuclear reactors at Cernavodă or close to it (no. Cernavodă's energy production is 1.4 MWh)", declared, in December 2023, the ANRE president.

It is worth noting that the solar power installed by prosumers, which will exceed 1.5 GW, as the ANRE president said, cannot be directly compared with the energy constantly produced by the Cernavodă nuclear power plant, as solar energy fluctuates greatly depending on the weather and the time of day.

In Brussels, Romania committed itself to a series of targets for renewable energy production. In order for Romania to meet its contribution to the European Green Pact of at least a 55% net reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030, Romania will need to install an additional 6.9 GW of green energy production capacity in the coming period. At EU level, 40% of energy is consumed by buildings.

In June 2023, the Ciolacu government promised in its government programme that it would initiate several programmes: one to cover the roofs of public institutions with photovoltaic panels, another for apartment blocks and collective housing, and a requirement that every new building built for residential purposes must have photovoltaic panels.

So far, the government has increased VAT on panels from 5 to 9%.