Self-consumption: the citizen connection

Producing and consuming your own electricity is now possible. On an individual and collective scale, citizens are organizing to make an old dream an emerging reality.

We've known for a long time that citizens have energy to spare! In France, the rooftops of our cities and countryside are blooming with solar panels. Today, while 350,000 individuals produce their own energy, most of them sell it back to the grid. But practices are evolving. More and more citizens are now engaging in self-consumption. At the end of 2017, 15,000 households self-consumed their electricity without being connected to the grid, while another 5,000 sold their surplus. While these self-consumers represent only 4% of total solar production installations, the trend is there. According to the Energy Regulatory Commission, nearly half of new requests for connection to the grid are for self-consumption.

From individual to collective

This recent enthusiasm for self-consumption is primarily explained by a desire: "to become an actor in one's energy production by becoming a producer," declares the Mayor of Luc-sur-Aude. The first commune in France to have launched a participatory solar park project, its citizens became shareholders in the company, a simplified joint-stock company (SAS), which manages production. Thus, 258 residents of the commune financed nearly three-quarters of the project, or €270,000, through the crowdfunding set up by Enerfip. This community power plant has the characteristic of being village-sized and producing what the residents consume. It is also the concrete realization of an energy transition on a local scale.

Self-consumption, the immense potential

36,000 municipalities are able to supervise this community energy and provide public spaces for energy collection. Other undeniable advantages are the available rooftop space for installing photovoltaics, as well as the sunshine rate and favorable weather conditions. Finally, there is a lever that can also greatly impact self-consumption in the coming years: financial opportunities. For certain sectors such as agriculture, community energy could provide other sources of income. In Germany, many farmers have made energy production their second activity. This is another way to exploit nature and live off self-consumption. Cyrille Arnoux, Web Editorial Manager