- Fluvius said it has started paying compensation for the curtailment of energy from residential PV systems.
Fluvius, Belgium’s electricity grid operator, says it will compensate residential PV systems at €10.60 ($11.49) per kVa if they are not reconnected within 30 working days after a curtailment event.
The company said it received 5,042 complaints from residential PV array owners last year, as their inverters were not immediately reconnected after curtailment incidents.
Fluvius said that these complaints represented just 0.55% of Belgium’s deployed 925,000 PV systems. The grid operator also said that, it takes the reconnection of the inverter “very seriously,” despite the limited percentage of these complaints.
The grid operator vowed to reconnect inverters within 30 days and contact owners within 10 days upon receiving complaints. Failure to resolve issues within 30 days will result in owners receiving €10.60 per kVA in compensation.
“Customers who are still entitled to green energy certificates will receive additional compensation,” it said. The company added that it is testing advanced voltage regulators that respond better to current curtailment issues, so inverters are significantly less likely to fail. “Fluvius will invest an additional €4 billion in the Flemish electricity distribution networks between 2023 and 2032, on top of regular investments,” said Fluvius.
Belgium reached a cumulative installed solar power capacity of more than 9.8 GW at the end of 2023. Most of this capacity is represented by rooftop PV systems up to 10 kW in size.
According to a recent analysis by Belgian institute EnergyVille, rooftop PV and onshore wind have the technical potential to reach 118 GW of capacity in Belgium. Of the three Belgian macro-regions, Flemish-speaking Flanders is the one with the largest solar potential for rooftop systems, at 67.56 GW, followed by French-speaking Wallonia with 31.54 GW, and the Brussels metropolitan region with 4.23 GW.
Author: Emiliano Bellini
This article was originally published in pv magazine and is republished with permission.
