Recently, Greece's largest natural gas supplier DEPA Commercial successfully obtained a loan of 390 million euros (approximately 423.19 million US dollars) from the European Investment Bank (EIB), which will be used to vigorously promote the construction of solar energy parks nationwide.
DEPA Commercial plans to establish a series of photovoltaic power plants in western Macedonia, Thessaly, and central Greece. This loan will provide over two-thirds of the funding support for DEPA's plan to build new solar power plants over the next four years, with a total investment expected to reach approximately 500 million euros.
After these projects are put into operation, they will add approximately 800MW of renewable energy capacity to the Greek power grid, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of about 278000 households. This measure is of great significance for Greece's energy structure transformation.
Greek Minister of Environment and Energy Theodoros Skylakakis said, "Such investments will further promote the penetration of renewable energy into Greece's energy structure, bringing multiple benefits, including reducing electricity costs for consumers and enhancing energy security, thereby enhancing our country's energy independence."
Greece's goal is to increase the installed capacity of renewable energy to 25GW by 2030 and achieve a 35% share of renewable energy in final energy consumption. As the main drivers of renewable energy growth in Greece, solar and wind energy are experiencing unprecedented expansion.
In 2023, the proportion of renewable energy in Greece's electricity production reached a record high of 57%, compared to 50.12% in 2022. Among them, photovoltaic power generation accounts for 18.4% of the national electricity production, ranking first in Europe, more than twice the EU average level (8.6%), and more than three times the global average level (5.4%).
In 2023, Greece will add 1591MW of photovoltaic installed capacity, accounting for 74% of the new renewable energy installed capacity. By the end of 2023, Greece had installed over 72500 photovoltaic systems. Among the newly installed capacity, 40.2% have a scale of over 1MWp, 56.6% have a scale of 10-1000KWp, and 3.2% have a scale of 10KWp.
How to solve the problem of excess green electricity?
As the proportion of renewable energy electricity continues to increase, Greece is facing a thorny problem: how to reduce excess green electricity when the power system cannot accommodate more green electricity?
At a recent online seminar organized by the Greek Photovoltaic Association (HELAPCO), a participant stated that the abandonment rate of green power projects is expected to reach 5% by the end of 2024 and further increase to 10% the following year.
The Greek think tank Green Tank pointed out that the electricity generation in the first four months of this year was 308 GWh, and it has increased to 515 GWh in July. Despite an increase in summer electricity demand in Greece, 85GWh of electricity had to be reduced in June and July.
If there are not enough battery energy storage facilities, photovoltaics may face a curtailment rate of up to 20% in the future. Professor Pantelis Biskas from the University of Athens predicts that by 2030, 15% to 16% of wind power generation and 20% of photovoltaic power generation will be affected.
Energy storage is the key to solving the problem of abandoned electricity
Obviously, energy storage is an effective method to solve the problem of abandoned electricity. However, Greece's layout in the field of energy storage seems to be somewhat slow.
Biskas stated that by 2023, energy storage capacity must reach 7GW to 8GW to reduce the curtailment rate to 2% to 4% and keep energy costs for consumers at a low level.
Faced with the gradually emerging issue of power abandonment, the Greek government is revising the goals of the National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP), which includes adjusting energy storage capacity targets and attempting to address this problem by encouraging investment in energy storage.
So far, Greece has only deployed one 1GW independent pre meter energy storage project and has successfully conducted two tenders (totaling 700MW). The first batch of projects is expected to be completed by 2025. The third bidding is about to begin, targeting the battery energy storage system in the original coal mining area. According to the 1GW plan, the winning energy storage project will receive public subsidy support.
In July of this year, Greek Minister of Environment and Energy Theodoros Skylakakis stated at a local energy conference, "Greece has abundant renewable energy resources, and in order to benefit from them, Greece should accelerate energy storage development.
Skylakakis also revealed that the government is developing a plan to open up the battery storage market in two ways in the future: allowing the deployment of behind the table battery storage systems along existing photovoltaic power plants; At the same time, it is also allowed to deploy independent meter front battery energy storage systems without public subsidy support. This measure is expected to bring new development opportunities to the Greek photovoltaic market.