Alberto Martín Rivals has over 25 years of experience in the energy sector. In the following interview, the CEO of NetOn Power talks to us about the company’s main projects and shares some key insights that could help accelerate the widespread adoption of self-consumption in Spain.
How do you assess these first few years?
We’re very pleased. We launched at the beginning of 2022, developing industrial self-consumption solutions through locally integrated PPAs. It’s a product that works very well because, today, photovoltaic self-consumption is the cheapest way for an industrial client to get energy. It also has strong social acceptance because the energy generated isn’t exported to distant consumption centers—it stays in the same municipality. What industrial clients usually want comes down to three things: competitive supply, sustainable energy, and security in both supply and price. That’s likely why PPAs have seen significant growth in Spain and are contributing to a reindustrialization process we haven’t seen in decades. Also, industrial self-consumption is really what drives volume. To achieve 1 MW, you’d need between 100 and 200 residential installations, whereas in industry, 1 megawatt is almost the minimum plant size they request.
What goals have you set?
We’ve developed a 1 GW project portfolio across Spain and Italy at various stages of progress, including operational rooftop and ground-mounted plants, others under construction, and some in negotiation or permitting. Our goal is to reach 600 MW of photovoltaic plants across both countries within five years—half in Spain and half in Italy.
What other projects are you working on?
Although our core business is self-consumption plants for industrial clients, our broader mission is to develop sustainable and competitive local energy solutions, always based on self-consumption. We’re involved in decarbonization efforts, with several projects aimed at replacing polluting technologies used in industrial production processes with clean alternatives, such as self-consumption plants combined with electric boilers. We’re also starting to explore energy communities, where we develop a plant for an anchor client and then offer nearby smaller companies the opportunity to join and share the energy. We fund these projects ourselves, so the plants belong to us, and we charge clients for their usage through a local PPA lasting between 10 and 28 years. We’re also looking into entering the fast-charging EV hub sector. In this case, we’re in talks with several CPOs (Charge Point Operators) who would provide the charging infrastructure while we handle energy production. Batteries are also of great interest to us. Right now, we can cover around 30% of an industrial client’s consumption, but with batteries, we could reach 60–70%. Battery costs have come down significantly, but subsidies are still required. In this regard, we don’t understand why the recent ministerial order for FEDER funds excludes batteries connected to self-consumption plants—especially those with surplus energy. These systems can inject energy into the grid, so the network benefits not only from the demand management capability provided by batteries but also from energy injections during critical times.We’ve also explored local hydrogen production using self-consumption plants, but we haven’t reached the break-even point yet due to the costs and efficiency of electrolyzers.
Will you do the same in Italy?
In Italy, we’ve started with our core product—the self-consumption plant—but we also want to pursue other opportunities. Our model works particularly well there because electricity prices are significantly higher than in Spain, so the potential savings for industrial clients are even greater. Italy is doing a great job. They’ve implemented several programs—Transizione 5.0 and Energy Release—to promote industrial photovoltaic self-consumption. One key difference is that in Italy there’s no concept of self-consumption without surplus. Clients have the right to use their electricity line bidirectionally. When we tell them that in Spain surplus injection is sometimes restricted, they struggle to believe it. We have to explain what an anti-spill mechanism is, and it sounds surreal to them. One of our main advocacy points in Spain is that clients should have the right to use interconnection lines in both directions.
Wouldn’t that increase the risk of more zero-price hours?
What it would actually prevent is the loss of 20% of the energy produced by self-consumption plants, which represents a cost of about €100 million per year, according to a study by Appa. Most of this energy is generated during non-zero-price hours—let’s not forget that in Spain, 90% of the time, prices are not zero.
What needs to improve for self-consumption to scale up in Spain?
There are four main areas that we believe could significantly boost self-consumption—especially industrial self-consumption, which accounts for almost 60% of all self-consumption installations in Spain—if we are to meet the 19 GW target set by the PNIEC for 2030. First,grant consumers the right to use their interconnection lines to export electricity. Second, make it easier to develop ground-mounted self-consumption plants. In Italy, for instance, any plant located within 500 meters of the edge of an industrial zone qualifies for a simplified administrative procedure that allows permitting in just three months. In Spain, some regions—like Castilla y León—have exempted self-consumption from restrictions that apply to photovoltaic development on certain land types, such as irrigated farmland. Third, offer equal subsidies for behind-the-meter storage in self-consumption systems as are provided for storage paired with other renewable technologies. Fourth, address the issue of distance regulations. It makes no sense to have different distance rules for ground-mounted versus rooftop self-consumption. Finally, we must encourage electrification of industrial consumption. The new ministerial order on storage incentives doesn’t help here—it requires thermal storage systems to be connected to the distribution grid, when in most cases they’re connected to the client’s internal network to generate, store, and use heat at optimal times of the day.
Are you planning to expand into other countries?
We’re considering entering a third country and have several in mind. We’re interested in large countries with strong solar resources, developing at least 2 GW of solar capacity per year, and with favorable pricing and regulatory conditions that support industrial development and offer clients real energy cost savings.
Will CfDs play a role?
CfDs (Contracts for Difference) are typically used by regulators to incentivize renewable development in countries where the technology isn’t yet competitive. In Spain, however, renewables are already growing rapidly at highly competitive prices without the need for CfDs, so they don’t seem particularly necessary.