Reducing gas consumption, a solution closer than you think

The aH72SK hybrid panel, manufactured by the Aragonese company Abora Solar, could generate substantial savings in gas consumption in homes, but also in the gas used to create the energy mix necessary for electricity to reach our homes.

Renewable energies already account for more than half of the energy consumed in Spain, however, non-renewable sources such as coal and gas are still necessary to achieve the production required to satisfy the total electricity needs.

At present, the price of gas has soared, partly due to the growing demand for gas and increasingly low reserves, and partly due to the armed conflict unleashed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has the NATO member states at odds, politically and economically, with Russia, the main supplier of gas to the European Union.

In the case of Spain, which is less dependent on Russian gas than its Central European partners, gas consumption has increased considerably this summer, especially for electricity production, essentially due to the drought affecting the whole country and drying up the reservoirs, from which a high percentage of energy is usually obtained to stabilise our energy mix[1].

In a scenario in which there is an urgent need to reduce the world’s dependence on gas consumption, it is worth asking ourselves what we, the end consumers, can do to reduce it. Moreover, in view of these problems, there is a need not only to accelerate the process of transition to 100% renewable energy, but also to try to achieve greater efficiency in the transformation processes. Even more so in a scenario of growing demand and an ever-decreasing supply of fossil fuels.

Based on these figures, a single aH72SK hybrid panel would save the consumer 300 euros per year on gas and electricity bills, while also helping to reduce the carbon footprint by avoiding the emission of 742 kg of CO2 each year.

Let’s imagine that the neighbourhood of a building in Madrid decides to install 60 aH72SK panels on its rooftop. The community consists of 50 two-bedroom houses and 50 three-bedroom houses.

The annual thermal production of the set of panels would be 103,790 kWh and the electrical production would be 35,922 kWh.

With heat production alone, the overall savings for the residents’ association would be 9,904 euros per year, while the savings from electricity production alone would be 8,980 euros per year.

The installation of sixty panels in a residential community could save 11,828 m³ of gas per year in the direct consumption of the building and 6,162 m3 could be reduced from the Spanish gas demand for domestic electricity production, a total of 18,000 m3.

The installation of aH72SK hybrid solar panels in a community would avoid 47,700 kg CO2 in a single year. It would also contribute to the on-site production of the energy consumed, reducing distribution losses associated with the transport of energy (in the case of electricity) or the fuel to produce it (in the case of city gas for the production of heat) that comes from power plants far from the points of consumption.

All of this in a single building in the city of Madrid, where it is estimated that there are around 200,000 communities of owners. In the country as a whole, there are around 1,200,000 homeowners’ associations, which means that a change to a more sustainable model is also in our hands.

[1] Energy mix: combination of the different energy sources that cover a country’s electricity supply.

[2] Reducing the production of the energy mix in terms of non-renewable energies by reducing gas production, which is the most critical, and maintaining constant production with other non-renewable energy sources (coal, nuclear…) in order to stabilise the electricity grid and respond to the demand not covered by renewable energy.

[3] Data used for the study: 0.07157 €/kWh gas; 0.25 €/kWh electricity. PCI gas 11,7 kWh/m³