ME sends into public consultation Urban Up program for installation of solar panels on apartment buildings
The Ministry of Energy has put into public consultation a new investment program – Urban Up, worth 150 million lei, intended for homeowners’ associations for the installation of photovoltaic panels on apartment buildings, announced the Minister of Energy, Sebastian Burduja.
He made a working visit regarding an integrated solution for electricity production with photovoltaic panels and battery storage, an investment made by the PPC Romania Group from private funds, on the roof of a residential building in Sector 6 of the Capital, according to Agerpres.
“The last important announcement … is the public consultation of a new initiative, a new investment program financed by the Ministry of Energy. It is called Urban Up. (…) It is a program of 150 million lei, financed from the budget of the Ministry of Energy. Homeowners’ associations, practically, apartment buildings, are eligible to develop systems similar to the one we see here today,” said Burduja.
Adrian Vintilă, advisor to the Minister of Energy, emphasized that it is a project that has been in the works for six months, and the non-refundable value is 100,000 lei for an association.
“It’s a project we’ve been working on for six months, to dismantle any other discussion about why it’s there today. (…) Taking into account what we see here, the data we’ll receive until the project is completed, because it’s in public transparency and we need to see some data, to receive some observations, at this moment we’re thinking of financing a minimum eligible system of 10 kilowatts of installed power and 50% storage, and the non-refundable value to be 100,000 lei for the association. It’s a covering cost from our point of view for an investment like this. That means that at the level of the entire budget we can have at least 1,500 blocks that benefit from such investments after the project’s implementation,” explained Vintilă.
He emphasized that immediately after the Ordinance is approved by the Government, the programmatic documents, namely the applicant’s guide, annexes, will follow.
“We want to be able to launch the project implementation in March at the latest. Why March? So that in the immediate future the project evaluation and implementation can begin, so that in the summer the roofs can already produce electricity,” pointed out Adrian Vintilă.
The advisor to the Minister of Energy mentioned that, at the level of Bucharest, there are, from the statistical data, over 15,000 blocks and, if photovoltaic systems were installed on all the blocks, taking into account the surface, the capacity would be over 600 megawatts.
“Of course it is unrealistic to think that we will install 600 megawatts on the blocks in Bucharest, but the maximum potential of 600 megawatts translates into over 800 million kilowatt-hours of green energy,” added Adrian Vintilă.
The Minister of Energy specified that the program will be financed from the ministry’s budget, from “some money set aside” from the sale of CO2 certificates.