Romanian Govt. unveils subsidy for photovoltaic panels and batteries for households

A total of 60,000 households in Romania will be able to benefit from funds for installing photovoltaic panels and batteries, as well as funds for increasing the energy efficiency of homes, the minister of investments and European projects, Adrian Câciu, recently announced.

The funds were made available after the introduction of the REPowerEU chapter into the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, or PNRR. 

The program will run in parallel with the "Casa Verde Fotovoltaice" program and aims to ensure that households receive the amount of energy they require from renewables. The program is not meant for prosumers, those who produce more energy than they require and seek to sell it back into the grid. 

"Beyond submitting payment request number 3, we have a new PNRR. It is good to say this because, through the new PNRR that we negotiated with the European Commission and which was approved by the Commission, we introduced the REPowerEU chapter, where we have new funding of EUR 1.4 billion, which will go into implementation from this year, and there the most important allocation is for people, for citizens, for the households of the population, where we have EUR 1.2 billion for photovoltaic panels and batteries, vouchers for this type of investment and, on the other hand, for the energy efficiency of individual households, of houses," Adrian Câciu stated during an interview, cited by G4Media.

The funds, the minister added, are granted to “people who need to ensure their energy sufficiency. It is not a program for prosumers. So those who will benefit from these vouchers will have enough energy for self-consumption, not to be energy producers, [and] the value of a voucher for photovoltaic panels is up to RON 25,000 (EUR 5,000) because it depends on each household, it's the equivalent of 5 kilowatts per household, maybe only 3 are needed somewhere, 4 somewhere else.” Another RON 25,000 is meant for storage capacity, namely for batteries, bringing the maximum funds available per household to EUR 10,000. 

The official also pointed out that the second component of the program, which concerns increasing the energy efficiency of homes, is called "Energy Efficient Home" and provides for the allocation of vouchers of up to RON 76,500 (EUR 15,300) for insulating homes. 

The minister maintained that the procedure will be straightforward, "so that the citizen will only submit a simple request," with the bureaucracy and elements of accounting to be handled by the County Council for the rural environment or the mayors in the case of homes in the urban environment. 

The two programs are primarily dedicated to homes in the rural environment, but may also benefit those in cities. Approximately 60,000 households will benefit from these two programs.

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(Photo source: Temistocle Lucarelli | Dreamstime.com)