The Electricity Data Center (EDC) started its activities today and immediately launched the registration of the first people interested in sharing electricity. As Petr Kusý, chairman of the EDC board of directors, confirmed today, there is great interest in this new product. Only within the first three hours after launch, around 800 interested parties registered.
Electricity sharing will take several forms in practice. It can be resale of electricity between up to 11 active customers, sharing within one house or within energy communities, which can include up to a thousand customer take-off points. Households, small and medium-sized enterprises or the public sector can participate. With a correctly chosen cooperation model, customers can save and at the same time get electricity from renewable energy sources; in practice, it will mainly be photovoltaic power plants.
As Petr Kusý further stated, the first sharing of electricity between customers could take place as early as September. But there is a catch – all participating customers must have a modern continuous electricity meter, and it has only a minimal number of customers installed so far. The electricity distributor is obliged to install a continuous electricity meter for everyone interested in sharing electricity, namely within three months of the application. A larger number of energy communities will probably start functioning in reality only at the end of the year.
Application deadline: within 20 days
The path to community energy was opened last year by an amendment to the Energy Act, known as lex OZE 2. “The start of electricity sharing is the first major milestone in our efforts to modernize the Czech energy industry. It was launched by our law, which is one of the most modern in Europe, and I believe that it will open up community energy to the widest possible public,” said Minister of Industry and Trade Jozef Síkela at the launch of electricity sharing, adding that further possibilities will be brought by the expansion of the planned EDC functionality for the second half of 2026.
Registration is carried out by the EDC as part of a three-step process. The first one is connected to the registration on the EDC portal with the verification of the participant’s e-mail. The second involves filling out an application for a contract for access to the EDC on this portal, and the third ends with its signature. “We will inform the applicant about the conclusion of the contract through a message sent no later than twenty days after receiving the application,” added Petr Kusý.
Community energy: Sharing electricity from photovoltaics in an apartment building in Luby near Cheb. Photo by DZD Solar (press release)
The changes also apply to apartment and multi-generational buildings, whose residents could share electricity – for example from rooftop photovoltaics – from January 2023 based on the decree of the Energy Regulatory Office (ERÚ). People who already share electricity in this way must register with EDC by the end of the year, otherwise they will lose the possibility of sharing. According to the Community Energy Union (UKEN), electricity sharing is more advantageous for smaller groups of up to 50 consumption points, as they have the opportunity to use elements of dynamic energy sharing instead of static energy sharing.
Even if it is competition from the perspective of the established energy companies, they will not block the changes, they say. Some of them will even support this news. “Energy sharing is the fulfillment of the principle of decentralization and democratization of the energy system, which we have been supporting for a long time and is the next step in the energy transformation of Europe. Considering that energy sharing, registration and portfolio management will not be a completely simple process, we are ready to explain the possibilities and pitfalls of sharing to those interested, to carry out the registration process and, in the foreseeable future, to also manage sharing within their community,” said Claudia Viohl, CEO of the group E.ON in the Czech Republic.
For now, just a prelude to bigger changes
For now, EDC operates in a temporary solution mode, which is related to, for example, the limitation of the number of energy community participants to a maximum of 1,000 collection points in three neighboring municipalities with extended scope. The start of full operation, which will offer new options for electricity sharing and at the same time expand EDC functions to other areas of modern energy, such as storage, flexibility or aggregation, is planned for the second half of 2026.
EDC has already issued a contract for the supply of the IT system for the full operation phase. The expected value of the contract is 1.75 billion crowns, of which 800 million should be covered by subsidies from the National Recovery Plan. Customers will pay a contribution to EDC activities in electricity prices, similar to how they pay for the financing of the Energy Regulatory Office today. In the case of EDC, it will be 5.10 crowns per month for each collection point.
David Tramba
