The service, called eNabo was introduced recently. This is the first time that Norwegian electricity customers will be rewarded for using electricity, especially for electric car charging, at times that are favorable for the local power grid. The launch is a collaboration between Norgesnett and the software company Volue.
"We're all rooting for the green shift, but for us as a grid operator, rooftop solar and electric cars also present a challenge. When a lot of solar energy flows into the grid from private homes on sunny days and more and more people choose to charge their electric cars at night, it creates an increasing load on the local grid," says Vidar Kristoffersen, CEO of Norgesnett, which has around 100,000 grid customers.
The main motive behind the new service is therefore to facilitate the feeding in of more and more solar energy from roofs and increased use of electric cars without having to raise the grid rent to finance a massive grid expansion.
Smart, but not "grid smart“
„Many of us have developed a relationship with smart charging of electric cars, i.e. charging at times when electricity in the spot market is cheapest, typically at night. The problem with this type of first-generation smart charging is that it doesn't take into account the load on the local electricity grid. It is not "grid smart". That's the element we're now introducing together with Norgesnett," says Kjetil Storset, who heads the "neighborhood systems" initiative at Volue. This initiative goes under the name Spark.
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"In practice, the system will be handled through operators that offer smart charging. The service will be offered in areas where the network is seen to be particularly heavily loaded. Initially, this will apply to around 130 neighborhoods, but the number will increase as new solar production is rolled out. End-customers who choose to join the scheme will receive an extra line on their grid rent invoice from Norgesnett where the compensation will appear. This will be independent of which electricity supplier you buy electricity from.
Helping to keep grid tariffs down
With the new system, the grid company will receive a continuously updated forecast of production, consumption and bottlenecks in the local power grid in the coming days.
According to NVE, Norgesnett is the country's most efficient grid company. "We are passionate about keeping our grid tariffs as low as possible, so it's important to think in new ways, which we are contributing to here," says Kristoffersen, and adds: "If we do nothing, we will soon be faced with two options. Either enormous grid investments, which customers will pay for through increased grid rent. Or throttling solar energy production and electric car charging to avoid overloading. In that case, we think it's much better to give customers a small premium for charging "grid-smart" with short-distance solar energy.
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"This is a good start and one of several tools needed for us to develop more solar power in Norway," says Solar Energy Cluster CEO Trine Kopstad Berentsen. (hcn)
