battery unit

RES project battery-addition feasibility sought by investors

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Investors generally view battery additions to RES projects as beneficial as, despite ongoing RES sector ambiguities, these upgrades ensure greater IRR figures, market officials have told energypress.

Market players are now working on taking crucial sustainability-related decisions concerning battery additions to RES projects ahead of forthcoming auctions and as a result of increased grid-injection limits being imposed in the market.

Investors, in collaboration with consulting companies, are engaging in calculations to assess the revenues resulting from integrating batteries into RES projects. This process includes identifying various factors that impact revenues and determining the extent of their influence.

RES investors are also making an effort to establish more specific information on variable costs that may arise, even though the sector’s regulatory framework is not yet entirely clear and concrete.

In conducting their calculations, investors are assuming that RES units will, from now onwards, operate under conditions of greater grid-injection restrictions and production cuts.

RES cuts more cost-efficient than battery installations

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RES cuts, to prevent grid overloads, appear to be the most competitive option available to small and medium-sized photovoltaics given the current cost of installing batteries behind the meter.

In the majority of cases, battery systems capable of providing stored energy to the grid over two-hour periods end up doubling the CAPEX cost of RES projects.

This essentially means that, at an operational level, without any state support for battery costs, tariffs would need to be doubled, especially in the cases of non-vertically integrated players, as was recently pointed out by Stelios Loumakis, president of SPEF, the Hellenic Association of Photovoltaic Energy Producers, during a presentation.

On the other hand, cutting RES grid input by 50 percent would result in annual PV park production losses of 20 percent, which could be compensated through a 25 percent tariff increase, a SPEF study showed, making this a more cost-efficient solution, the association’s president noted.

RES cuts, the SPF chief stressed, do not constitute a long-term viable solution as they restrict renewable energy supply, a pivotal factor if green energy is to further penetrate the system.

 

 

Recovery fund subsidies worth €400m for energy storage units

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The energy ministry plans to allot 400 million euros of EU recovery fund money to the development of central electrical energy storage units. A related proposal by the ministry is headed for inclusion into the national recovery plan.

The aforementioned sum will be used to subsidize energy storage projects and will be made available to investors through a mechanism whose details are still being negotiated by government and European Commission officials.

Once the mechanism has taken final shape it will be forwarded to Brussels’ Directorate-General for Competition and Directorate-General for Energy for approval from both, necessary ahead of its implementation.

Though further details on the prospective support mechanism remain unknown, its subsidies are expected to be offered through a competitive procedure promoting selected projects.

At this point, developments have indicated both central energy storage technologies – pumped hydroelectric energy storage and accumulators (battery units) – will be eligible for subsidy support.

A study on central energy storage conducted by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) for RAE, the Regulatory Authority for Energy, has shown that a combination of these two technologies is the optimal solution, as each covers different needs.