VP Law Firm • may 17, 2024
Production of Electricity for Private Needs in Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina
The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) has adopted a new Regulation on Electricity Self-Consumption, which was published in Official Gazette of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina No. 30/24 on 24 April 2024 and took effect on 1 May 2024. The new rules govern the status of natural persons who produce electricity for their private consumption (as ‘self-consumers’ or ‘prosumers’) and the treatment of these self-consumers by distribution system operators (DSOs) and suppliers.
The Regulation was required to be adopted by the entity’s Energy Regulatory Commission (FERK) within 6 months from the entry into force of the Renewable Energy and High-Efficiency Cogeneration Law (Official Gazette of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina No. 82/2023).
The package of FBiH energy reform laws allows natural persons to produce electricity for their own consumption.
Self-consumers are defined as final customers that produce electricity for their private consumption using renewable energy and/or high-efficiency cogeneration and are able to feed any excess energy generated back into the grid in return for energy or money credits.
The Regulation governs the following issues:
- Requirements and procedure for becoming a self-consumer or collective self-consumer;
- Issuance of electricity permits;
- Responsibilities of DSOs (record-keeping, assessing options for connecting self-consumers to the grid, and metering electricity delivered and fed back into the grid);
- Responsibilities of suppliers (accounting for energy and money credits for each billing period);
- Delegation of balance responsibility from household self-consumers to suppliers;
- Safety-related and technical requirements for generation facilities.
The Regulation on Qualified Electricity Producers and the Regulation on Electricity Self-Consumption are intended to promote the stability and efficiency of the energy sector and help increase the number of renewable energy generation facilities.