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An “ESCO” agreement remunerates the investor (the Energy Service Company) based on the energy savings generated by the PV system for the Customer.

Under an “Operating Lease”, the investor is remunerated based on the total energy produced by the photovoltaic system and made available on the Customer’s side of the meter.

The Customer, in turn, can use this energy without paying excise duties or grid charges, thereby achieving significant savings compared with energy purchased from its supplier through the electricity grid.

Furthermore, as the Customer is the holder of the Electricity Production Facility (i.e. the photovoltaic system from the perspective of the electricity system), it is entitled to the revenues generated by the energy that is not used for its own needs and is fed into the grid (for example, during weekends), regardless of the applicable remuneration mechanism: Dedicated Withdrawal (“Ritiro Dedicato”) (i.e. the zonal price), Dedicated Withdrawal + a share of the CER incentive (if the Customer chooses to participate as a producer in a Renewable Energy Community), or, alternatively, FER X. For systems below 1 MWp, FER X requires only registration of the system in the relevant register and provides the Electricity Production Facility holder with a fixed tariff for twenty years.

Because, in NetFiber’s “Energy District” model, these are not three separate aspects, but three essential elements of the same model: the same site that hosts an edge data center (also referred to as small-scale or local data center, and definitely not a so-called hyperscale data center — the kind operated by the major US tech companies) also hosts the PV system that powers it and the BESS that make it less exposed to daily energy price peaks.

Fiber connectivity is not an accessory; it is the fundamental element that makes the site accessible with low latency, which is particularly important for AI applications.

An integrated approach that is currently unmatched in Italy.

Neither: the real bottleneck is the available grid capacity at the site.

You can secure an option on a piece of land in an afternoon, while a permit can be submitted and then processed. Administrative procedures are now well-established, tested, and transparent, including with regard to their expected timelines.

But if the section of the electricity grid where the connection is requested is already saturated (and there is no way to know this before submitting the project through the relevant “Grid Connection Application”), the project risks remaining on paper, regardless of how “ready” everything else is. This is because the Local Electricity Distribution System Operator (DSO) responsible for that section of the grid is required to provide a connection, but is not bound by specific obligations regarding the cost or timeframe for delivering it.

That is why every opportunity we assess starts with available substation capacity, not the site plan: a perfect site — whether a plot of land or an industrial rooftop — located on a congested section of the electricity grid is worth less than a less-than-perfect site on a section of the grid with available connection capacity.

This is not a question that can be answered in the abstract, which is why we are wary of anyone who dismisses it with a slogan.

An EPC solution makes sense when the investor has capital available and wants to own the asset for the entire useful life of the system (25–30 years), depreciating the related CAPEX on its books, with an expected Internal Rate of Return (IRR) in the double digits and a typical payback period of 5 to 7 years.

An operating lease makes sense when capital needs to remain available for other strategic investments by the Customer, or when the Customer’s industrial horizon is shorter than the system’s useful life. The Customer pays a lease fee, while both the technical and operational risks remain with the party that owns and manages the asset. At the end of the operating lease, ownership of the photovoltaic system is transferred in full to the Customer. Furthermore, the Customer is the holder of the Electricity Production Facility from the outset, maximizing savings on its energy bill and benefiting from the economic value of the energy produced by the system in excess of its immediate needs (for example, during weekends).

The right question, therefore, is not “which one is more advantageous?” but rather “which of the two models better meets the Customer’s needs and objectives?”. That is why at NetFiber we address this question as early as the pre-feasibility stage of the PV system.