Consumers have warmed to the idea of renting solar panels from a solar installation set up by Helsingin Energia (Helen) in Suvilahti, the site of an old gasworks in Sörnäinen. In July the utility announced that it would be installing solar panels on the rooftop of a power substation and offering customers the chance to rent them.
“When we launched the service, we had a couple hundred sales in the first hour,” said Helen unit manager Perttu Lahtinen.
Advance bookings so far have exceeded 900 and the utility began offering formal rental agreements from Monday. The agreement allows Helsinki Energy customers to rent solar panels, the output from which is then deducted from the customer’s monthly electricity consumption.
“We expected that consumers would be interested and the advance bookings have confirmed this. We have reached our sales targets and are very satisfied,” Lahtinen added.
Helsinki Energy promised that it would be building more of what consumers want. The popularity of the first solar rental plant has prompted the utility to begin planning another facility.
“We are looking at certain locations. They would be about the same size (as the Suvilahti solar energy plant),” Lahtinen disclosed.
Panel output to be deducted from monthly electricity consumption
For a monthly rental fee of 4.40 euros, customers will see the output of their solar panels deducted from electricity consumption on their monthly bills. The utility estimated that the electricity generated by one panel would correspond to about one euro each month, reducing the panel rental cost to 3.40 euros per month.
Each solar panel produces about 285 watts of energy – enough to power 25 energy-saving bulbs. Helsinki Energy said that average production from a single panel would reach 17 percent of full capacity during the summer and one percent during the winter.
An online and mobile service will allow consumers to monitor real-time power production of the entire plant. Moreover a live camera will show how much sunlight the plant receives as well as how production fluctuates based on the weather conditions. Consumers will also be able to compare the output of their panels with their own energy consumption.
The sun-powered plant to be constructed in Suvilahti is now slightly larger than originally planned. The maximum electricity output of all the panels combined has been estimated at 260 megawatts – enough to keep the lights burning in 130 two-room flats for a year. This makes it Finland’s largest solar energy producer, boosting the total solar electricity output connected to Finland’s grid by about one-tenth.
Construction is set to begin this autumn, while the solar panels are expected to begin producing electricity in spring 2015.
