Bold 10 TWh ‘scissors’ in 2030 to green power generation if consumption doesn’t increase – Why storage doesn’t solve all problems

It should be considered a given that green electricity generation cuts will be progressive, going towards 2030 and even in large sizes, with the only tool to mitigate the phenomenon being the increase in energy demand. The above indicates the estimates of ADMIE for the electricity production-demand balance, where towards the end of the decade there is an excess of green electricity production of the order of 10 TWh.

In more detail, as the Director of Strategy & Development Planning of the ADMIE System, Constantinos Tsirekis, stated in his presentation at the recent annual event of POSPIEF, in the scenario of an installed capacity of around 30 GW RES in 2030, the levels of electricity generation from RES will vary at 67 TWh , the balance of international interconnections an additional 2 TWh when the demand estimate for 2030 is at 59 TWh.

Consequently, based on the addition and subtraction, it follows that 10 TWh are left over, i.e. the RES producers in 2030, if things remain as they are in terms of the size of the demand, will be subject to cuts of the order of 14% of their production on an annual basis.

In this direction, ADMIE underlines that it is necessary to speed up the electrification of energy consumption, the new interconnections with countries showing increased demand (e.g. Central Europe) and the storage with the utilization of all combinations i.e. behind the meter, standalone and integration of behind-the-meter storage in existing RES stations.

Storage is not a… panacea

It should be noted that the contribution of storage to the curtailment problem has clear limits, which concern electricity demand.

That is, the use of storage systems allows the time shift of production, for example of photovoltaics, from the daytime hours to the evening hours, however if there is no consumption, the stored energy will be lost.

From this point of view, the problem of cuts going to 2030 and especially in 2030 emerges as a “necessary evil” if the increase in installed capacity is not accompanied by an increase in demand beyond the achievement of storage targets. To add, as Mr. Tsirekis mentioned in the conclusions of his presentation, studies with the assumption of an “infinite” network show that the installation of stations with a total power of more than 30 GW may lead to large energy cuts.

He also added that power cuts due to grid congestion do not appear today, as well as power cuts due to grid congestion are not expected in the coming years, except at the local level, issues that ADMIE had raised in his letter as part of the public consultation on the bill .

The image of the system today

The current commitment of electric space, counting the RES plants in operation and those that have received OPS from ADMIE or DEDDIE, reaches approximately 27.5 GW. The pending requests to ADMIE for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023 are estimated at approximately 37 GW and the space commitment for the installation of future RES units follows, i.e. offshore wind farms and Crete which exceeds 3 GW.

The sum of the above reaches 67.5 GW when the maximum historical value at the peak of the load is 11 GW and much more, the estimate of the capacity to absorb RES power from the System, having also completed the DPA 2025-2034 strengthening projects, is about 30 GW.

Practically, based on the above numbers, the margins of the system to accommodate new RES projects that will now be on the development track and will seek to receive OPS, are zero, as the projects in operation and those that have already entered the OPS list, exceed the technical possibilities until at least 2030. The problem focuses on the new projects that will request connection to the grid, since, as mentioned above, the planned strengthening of the System as set in the ten-year Development Program, covers the national goals for connecting new RES projects with a horizon in 2030.

The numbers”

Indicatively, based on the data of December 2023, the ADMIE system hosts 318 RES projects divided into 197 wind, 111 photovoltaic and 10 others. Accordingly, the total power of the 318 projects is estimated at 5,127 MW and is divided into 4,011 wind, 1,040 photovoltaic and 76 others. A total of 11.8 GW are connected to the system (ADMIE) and network (DEDDIE), of which 5.1 GW are wind, 6.2 GW are photovoltaic and 0.5 are other technologies.