Serbia’s National Assembly of the Republic (unicameral legislature) has adopted the amendments to the Use of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) Law, which will enable new capacities for the production of electricity from renewables into the power system.
The adopted amendments will resolve the issue of overloads in connection requests for new solar and wind power plants, whose required capacity for connection has increased from 4.8 gigawatts (GW) to 20 GW in the last two years (two and a half times more than the total capacity of all power plants in Serbia).
To avoid imbalances in the grid, the new legislative framework will enable the state-owned Elektromreža Srbije, as the system operator, to postpone the connection of power plants to the system should there be an insufficient reserve for balancing. However, investors can still opt not to delay the connection if they provide additional capacity for balancing either on their own or through another market participant.
The changes protect the guaranteed supplier, Elektroprivreda Srbije, from assuming the financial risk of balancing responsibility for all renewable energy producers. The law retains this obligation for privileged producers who enter the incentive system for a limited time period, while commercial projects will resolve the issue of balancing responsibility commercially.
The market premium system will now also enable investors to compete with each other at auctions for incentives, aiming to offer more capacity for a guaranteed supply of households and/or direct contracts to end customers. This will allow green energy to remain in Serbia and be consumed domestically instead of being exported, Serbia’s Mining and Ministry said.
Households will now also install solar panels up to 10.8 kilowatts (kW), while other customers up to 150 kW will maintain priority access to the system with no balance responsibility. This aims to encourage the concept of buyer-producers for households and small businesses.
Large industries will also have the right to self-supply, once the planned amendments to the country’s Energy Act are confirmed and adopted.
