Mini Production Law amendment (Decree Law 34/2011)

The Mini Production Law regulates the production of electricity from renewable energy sources in small units of less or equal to 250 kW, utilizing only one type of technology and excluding the Microproduction, co-generation units and innovation and proof of concept systems. ESCOs are allowed to apply to this Law. The regulation simplifies the licensing regime through the new SRMini electronic platform managed by DGEG. Any entity that has a contract for purchasing electricity with a relevant consumption of electricity can apply to this law, provided that injected power does not excedd 50% of the contracted power. The law included two types of feed-in tariff systems for the remuneration of renewable electricity. First, the general regime whereby the tariff depends on the conditions of the market and no special tariff is applied. Second, the "bonified Tariff", where a special reference tariff of EUR 250/MWh is provided for systems below 20 kW. As for systems larger than 20 kW, a tender process is used to select the systems that offer better discount against the reference tariff. An annual ceiling of 50 MW is used for the Bonified Regime. The Bonified Regime is also dependent on the realization of energy efficient audits in the place of the installation and implementation of the suggested energy efficiency measures. Annually 1 % of the registered installations will be fiscalised.