The development of renewable energy capacity faces three major challenges worldwide, namely the very high failure rate of companies supplying equipment, difficulties with plant security and incompatibility of some equipment.

“There are three major global challenges that may also have an impact on Romania. Over 90% of equipment suppliers have a life cycle of less than 10 years. Financially sound suppliers are needed, otherwise there will be problems in the after-sales and service segments. These things can make an investment go to waste”, said Vlad Doicaru, Vice President of Huawei Romania, at the conference “Energy Efficiency for Energy Transition” organized in Iași by Energynomics together with the Romanian Energy Efficiency Fund – FREE and the Directorate for Energy Efficiency within the Ministry of Energy.

Secondly, the safety of photovoltaic and energy storage systems is uncertain, as problems have already started to occur during installation (short-circuits, implementation errors and fires). These shortcomings can also bring some challenges for insurance companies.

The third challenge is that suppliers with more than one product in their portfolio are preferred by customers, but this can also be a vulnerability in that, in a PV system where equipment from many suppliers is used, there can be incompatibilities between them.

“A study in Germany shows that 10% of the PV equipment installed between 2010 and 2013 is unsustainable because it has degraded. That is almost 2 billion euro that should be reinvested in restoring the original parameters of the panels and inverters,” Doicaru said.

The conference in Iași was the fourth of a series of 5 scheduled by the Energynomics communication platform, the Romanian Fund for Energy Efficiency – FREE and the Directorate for Energy Efficiency within the Ministry of Energy. The project is financed by Norwegian Grants 2014-2021. The final conference is scheduled on November 16 and 17, in Bucharest.