The Spanish government is planning to tax homes that produce their own energy through solar power and store some of it using batteries.
A draft decree prepared by the Industry, Energy and Tourism Ministry establishes a new fee to discourage the use of batteries or other storage systems by people who produce electricity, with solar or photovoltaic panels for instance, and who are connected to the national power grid.
Under the new rules, these self-reliant consumers will not be able to use products such as the Powerwall battery recently launched by American automotive and energy-storage company Tesla, and will additionally be penalized for the storage systems that come included with the latest generation of solar panels.
Only off-grid consumers who have their own, completely independent energy-production systems will be able to use batteries without being penalized for it. Modern storage devices typically have an autonomy of two hours or so, making it difficult to be entirely self-reliant.
The new fee will not affect systems without storage, which work only for instantaneous consumption.
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