Sharing solar with your neighbour: How does the EU electricity market design unlock energy sharing?

The European Commission recently made energy sharing a key pillar of the EU Electricity Market Design Reform. From 2024, energy sharing is set to unlock new opportunities for rooftop solar. 
 
While on-site solar is booming – Europe’s buildings hosted a total of 138 GW of solar in 2022 and the capacity should double by 2026 - the existing frameworks limit its financial and decarbonisation potential.
 
Individual self-consumption limits the options to market excess generation, and it is not accessible to all consumers, such as renters and consumers in multi-apartment buildings.
 
Energy sharing allows citizens to share self-generated electricity with their neighbours on a contractual basis. It offers: 

• High returns for generators: Energy sharing allows owners to share excess energy with nearby consumers.  
• Everybody can receive solar electricity as an off-taker, independent of housing conditions and they receive it at a price which is usually significantly lower than supplier prices.  
• Energy sharing can reduce grid constraints: The price difference between shared electricity and supplier electricity will incentivise load shifting, and therefore counteract grid congestion.  

 
In our webinar, the European Commission will present its reasoning behind this new article; a system operator will describe the integration into distribution grids; a consumer rights organisation will speak about implications for consumers; and a solar company will outline what options are available for solar deployment.  
 
We will present our new report on a regulatory framework for energy sharing, which we called collective self-consumption. As well as describing the potential for the solar sector, we will discuss details of the European Commission’s regulatory proposals.