When it’s sunny, photovoltaics in Poland sometimes produce so much energy that negative prices appear, which means… you have to pay someone extra to take the excess energy. This doesn’t apply to individual recipients, as they always pay.
Negative prices usually occur on weekends, when demand for energy is lower. Last Sunday, August 4, the producer had to pay the recipient more than PLN 500 per megawatt-hour on the balancing market for electricity for 45 minutes from 10:15 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., and negative prices were in effect from 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
During hours of surplus production, or in Polish power grid terminology “overcontracting”, it is beneficial Energy reception via storage facilitiesAbsolutely. Warehouses are an essential component of any system that wants to switch to renewable energy. Largely because they make it possible to store energy when supply is very high and release it when production is low and prices are high. We don’t have many of them in Poland.
In us The most important energy storage facilities are pumped-storage power plants.Which in short raises the water to a high level thanks to the current, and then restores this current by draining the water down. Four of them are owned by PGE Energia Odnawialna, including Poland’s largest pumped storage power plant in Żarnowiec (716 MW), Porąbka-Żar (500 MW), Dychów (90 MW) and Solina (200 MW). They have one plant each: Energa (Żydowo 156 MW) and the Niedzica hydroelectric power plant with a capacity of 46 MW.
The problem is that while these power plants have been producing a steady 1.0-1.2% of the system’s energy over the past several months, or about 130-150 GWh per month with periodic fluctuations, in June this year that share dropped to 0.8%, or just 72 GWh, and in July production fell to less than 47 GWh, or just 0.6%, of the system. In previous years, falling below 100 GWh per month was rare, but the output of these six power plants has never fallen below 61 GWh per month in the past five years.
In other words, when it’s needed most, pumped storage stops working. Why? We asked PGE.
The decline in the output of pumped storage power plants is mainly due to ESP Update Back To The Road. In the case of ESP Solina and Dychów, the reason for the production decline is hydrological drought.“The PGE press office told Business Insider,” the statement said.
Up to 290 MW of power was shut down due to hydrological drought. In other words, because the weather is sunny, which favors photovoltaic power generation, less water is flowing to pumped storage power plants. Not only are the panels not producing much, but we also have fewer opportunities to store energy due to the weather.
Request? Pumped-storage power plants may not be able to secure the reception of excess energy production in cooperation with photovoltaics on sunny and hot summer days, and will be more effective in storing wind energy in the cooler, more water-abundant months.
New power station
This is of course also necessary when the wind is blowing strongly. Construction of the largest power plant of this type in Poland has already begun. In December last year, PGE and the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management signed an agreement to finance the construction of a pumped storage power plant in Moloty with a planned capacity of about 1,050 MW. This means that after this investment, the capacity of these energy storage facilities will increase by 75%. from the current 1,413 MW.
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The cost of building this power plant It is estimated at 4-5 billion Polish zlotys.The idea of building it dates back to the reign of Władysław Gomułka. Construction even began during the reign of Edward Gierek.
However, this is not a quick and easy task. The Borabka-Warr power plant was built under the aforementioned First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party, Gierek, over a period of ten years. At that time, construction may have taken longer than it does today, but there were no time-consuming environmental measures.
In Europe alone, there are more than 40 such units in operation today, and 10 new pumped storage power plant projects have been announced.
There is an alternative.
If pump storage is not a guarantee during the dry summer months, what other options are available? One of the most important is battery solutions.
Until now, Tesla has dominated the large battery energy storage market with its Megapacks. In the second quarter of this year, it achieved record revenue and profits in the warehouse category by executing 9.4 gigawatt hours. Tesla’s previous quarterly record was just over 4 gigawatt hours. Production is likely to begin next year at a new factory in Shanghai, China. But that’s where the Chinese come in.
CATL’s Tianheng, a containerized energy storage system, offers a standard capacity of 6.25 megawatt-hours. For comparison, Tesla Megapacks can store up to 3.9 megawatt-hours. CATL’s research into long-life battery technology has struck a balance between performance and durability, prompting the company to offer a 20-year warranty to maintain the energy storage system’s capacity for 15 years on Tesla Megapacks.
Furthermore, CATL offers the world’s first no-deterioration battery warranty for such a system over five years of use. As you can see, the competition is getting fiercer, which is always good news for customers.
Possible solutions also include producing hydrogen – perhaps the fuel of the future – which is suitable for energy storage, although currently producing it through hydrolysis means losing energy input.
Big money in hydrogen
Poland is the third largest producer and consumer of hydrogen in Europe – 1.2 million tons per year. Orlen’s plans include building a facility by 2030 at a cost of PLN 7.4 billion, with the potential to Production of 19 thousand tons of hydrogen of automotive quality annuallyHalf of them will be produced with low or no emissions. In addition, 100 hydrogen refueling stations are planned to be operational in Orlen by the end of the decade.
A project is also being prepared in Gorzica by a team of managers from Westa Investments, which assumes the production of green hydrogen on a large scale.
The Yamal pipeline and the planned route of a new hydrogen logistics corridor from Scandinavia to Central and Western Europe pass near this city. H2 Energy has already signed contracts for more than 1,500 hectares for the implementation of renewable energy projects.
This potential will be used to produce green hydrogen. Based on electrolysers based on PEM technology, known for years (with a loss of approximately 50% of energy input), the first phase of the project will be built, allowing Production of more than 30 thousand tons of hydrogen annuallyThe electrolyzers, with a capacity of about 200 MW, will be powered by pre-built wind and photovoltaic sources.
The project will enable the production of electricity using renewable sources with a target capacity of about 1.5 GW. For comparison, at the end of May this year. the total installed capacity of photovoltaics and wind turbines in Poland amounted to 27.6 GW – according to ARE data.
Author: Jacek Fraczek, Business Insider Polska journalist
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