Collective energy self-consumption, aka "selling electricity to your neighbor"
Collective energy self-consumption, aka "selling electricity to your neighbor"
French grid operator Enedis has identified 187 collective self consumption operations in France, as of the end of March. The operations bring together 2,200 consumers and more than 300 producers, generating 11 MW total power capacity, mainly from solar.
I believe this is a very good initiative. France is allowing collective self consumption.
It means that in an appartement building or in a neighborhood (up to 2km radius) people can organize in a collective to redistribute electricity to each other. If someone has extra production one day then he can redistribute to other people in the collective. For free or at the price they agreed upon in the collective.
It does not need any extra hardware, it's using the existing installation from the national utility grid.
This is exactly how I imagine a solarpunk community would work.