The Global Community for Sustainable Energy Professionals
Last April, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo published a story on PV farms that claimed to have produced solar electricity between midnight and 7 a.m. The newspaper suspected the operators of running diesel-burning generators at night to cash in on the high feed-in tariffs for photovoltaic electricity in that country. A number of foreign media channels, including the influential Bloomsberg Businessweek, picked up the story.
The reaction of the Spanish PV industry association, Asociación de la Industria Fotovoltaica, regretted the fact that vague and sometimes unsubstantiated accusations of photovoltaic fraud get into the press with relative frequency. Not all of these stories translate into a valid legal case. Concerned about the public image of the sector, they asked the government to investigate the newspaper’s claims.
Such messages do indeed harm the image of solar energy. Moreover, they fuel questions regarding the usefulness of government incentives. Is the potential for fraud an argument against the system of feed-in tariffs?
Before jumping to any conclusions, it is worthwhile to put the figures into perspective. The total amount of energy that was allegedly produced fraudulently was 4,500 MWh, according to El Mundo. This is 0.05% of the total PV production in Spain in 2009 (Sources: Energyportal.eu and IEA). In the same period, the European retail sector lost 1.33% of their turnover to theft and the American retail sector even more at 1.61% (Source: CRR Centre for Retail Research).
While the story in El Mundo may well be true, some other messages that circulate on the Internet are certainly 'urban legends'. One such legend has been very persistent over the past two years: the story of PV panels being illuminated by fluorescent lamps at night to make them produce more. This is exceedingly unlikely because of simple efficiency reasons. Such an installation would have an efficiency of 10 to 15% at most, while feed-in tariffs are never more than four times the price of grid electricity. Consequently, it is impossible to make profit in this way.
That said, the messages on potential fraud should be taken seriously and investigated in detail. The fact that different tariffs exist for the same electrical energy does indeed leave the door open for fraud. The situation is similar in many countries to that of diesel fuel used for transport and fuel oil used for residential and commercial heating. These are essentially the same product but have different VAT rates, impelling effective and often expensive anti-fraud measures.
How do we avoid multiple tariff systems for the same product and still stimulate sustainable energy? The most rigorous way would be to charge high taxes on all fuels causing greenhouse gas emissions and leave the rest of the sustainable energy development up to the free market. But that begs the question: would this result into a more efficient system for stimulating sustainable energy? Would it exclude all fraud? And when government incentives are efficient in reaching their goal, can a certain percentage of fraud be seen as acceptable 'collateral damage'?
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Recent declarations by the presidency of National Energy Regulatory Commission (CNE) indicate that night electricity injections might be due to technical / administrative issue (data recording and time stamp). About 2000 installations have already been inspected and some presented this problem. Today the possible fraud seems to be discarded. CNE presidency told that sometimes time stamp is 12 hours delayed (1h00 instead of 13h00).
The real problem is how the press puts the accent on the initial alarm, but clarifications are much less broadcasted. What is finally in the minds is probably the fraud, not the technical / administrative issue, which is worrying.
With double tariff the fraud problem is virtually unrecoverable.
Consider that you can easily get energy from the network at market tariff, and deliver it to the inverter input, where the energy will accounted at green tariff.
The equipment to do so is no more complicated or more expensive than an UPS.
If you add to the control circuitry a Pyranometer, you can supply the network with a pattern compliant with the day/night/season/whether rhythm.
The network operator has no way to distinguish it from the pattern of an effective panel. The only option available are sudden, repeated and deep inspections...or double tariff deleting
Thanks for this clarifications, Fernando. It doesn't surprise me.
The press is indeed faster in accusing than in rectifying.