Bulgaria to abolish limitations for rooftop solar panels for own use

Bulgaria is introducing a law that would eliminate the administrative procedure for households and firms to install renewables on buildings – essentially rooftop solar panels, though they won’t be able to deliver any surpluses to the grid for now.

The National Assembly of Bulgaria supported a motion, with 109 votes in favor and 11 against, to allow the installation of systems for the production of electricity from renewable sources for own consumption on rooftops and façades without the need to obtain permits. The members of parliament that submitted the bill said it would speed up the process of such facilities.

The capacity cap is a whopping 5 MW. The new rules would apply to structures in urban areas. Lawmakers have another round of voting in a plenary session to pass the proposal.

The procedure remains complex for the prosumers who wish to deliver their excess electricity output to the grid

If the owners want to deliver the power surplus from their rooftop solar panels to the grid, they will still have to go through a complex and lengthy procedure to register as producers, due to insufficient capacity.

Chairman of the Energy Committee Radoslav Ribarski from the We Continue the Change group, the largest one in parliament, promised the next step would be to regulate the placement of excess electricity in the market. In his words, the trend across Europe is for prosumers to sell their surpluses.

The European Commission’s REPowerEU plan includes measures to accelerate the permitting process for wind and solar power

The European Union has urged member states to accelerate the permitting process for renewables, especially wind and solar power projects, in a push to end the reliance on Russian fossil fuels as soon as possible. The proposed REPowerEU package of measures and funding enhances the climate ambitions set out under the European Green Deal and the NextGenerationEU emergency spending program of more than EUR 800 billion for a green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the plan also envisages an increase in the use of fossil fuels in the short term.