Although the enormous inflow of funding for investments in energy and energy efficiency is excellent, the lack of expertise may hinder the projects’ implementation.

“We see that there is a lot of money and everyone is investing, but I fear, as a person who works in the implementation area, that there are very few people or very few companies with trained human resources,” said Claudiu Butacu, president of the EfdeN association, at the “Smart Cities” conference, organized by Energynomics.

The association he leads has started to build a community for prosumers in which he tries to bring together renewable energy installation companies, suppliers of materials and technical solutions and prosumers.

Currently, there are more than 20,000 people actively communicating in this community, but a number of difficulties have been reported. “There are businesses that use outdated technology and respect no quality standards in their work. So much so that, sometimes, furniture corners are used instead of clips for holding the photovoltaic panels. There are situations when companies demand up front money from consumers in order to add them a fictitious queue or to advance those who wish to take advantage of AFM’s programs”, added Butacu.

In addition, there are not enough licensed electricians, and some companies install solar panels using unqualified personnel. One of the reasons is that in the last three years affected by the pandemic, universities have not been able to train specialists as they should have, because such things cannot be learned through online school.

DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION OF CLAUDIU BUTACU

“We are in the same situation when we try to recruit people for our project. Many students lack all knowledge about anything. These things are real. And if we pretend that they are not, then it is possible to end up implementing those 500 million worth budgets, NRRPs and so on, with the same people,” Butacu said.

The “Smart Cities” conference was organized by Energynomics, with the support of our partners, among them ABB, ENGIE Romania, Finder, Flash Lighting Services, Photomate, REI Group, SIXT.