Storage represents the main emergency of the national energy system and that’s why we insisted on two components, on the one hand the pumping storage plants, and on the other hand, the batteries, declared, on Wednesday, the Minister of Energy, Sebastian Burduja.
“The main emergency of the national energy system is storage. We all saw Sunday’s data, a day with very low consumption (…) If we don’t have storage capacity, we really put the producers of renewables in difficulty, but in fact and the energy system and its stability,” said Burduja at the Solar Energy Bucharest Summit.
He emphasized that, in this context, he insists on two components, one of them being the pumping storage plants, and expressed his wish to see bidders for the feasibility study for Tarniţa Lăpusteşti.
“We are moving forward with Tarniţa-Lăpusteşti, with my great desire to see bidders for the feasibility study. It is difficult, I understand that the Romanian industry, the design institutes no longer exist, and then in complex works we face this shortage of possible bidders. …) That’s why I insist that 2,000 MW, and that’s what the National Energy Dispatch says, 2,000 MW of storage should come from pumped-storage plants”, stated the Minister of Energy, according to Agerpres.
The remaining 2,000 MW, he added, will be supplied from batteries, as a call for projects through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan is underway and a storage scheme for the Modernization Fund is being prepared.
“For batteries, we have an ongoing appeal at the PNRR, almost 200 million euros of storage in batteries as well as the production of photovoltaic panels, photovoltaic cells, and I wish there was success for us to have. Recently, based on many requests, we extended finalization of this call by around April 20-21. When we draw the line, I would like to see some intense competition there and finally put the funding on the storage side. In addition, we have a scheme in the pipeline for storage on the Fund for modernization. There we are discussing sums that can be generous, 500 million euros, and we really want to be able to enter this scheme in the next edition of the Modernization Fund Committee this fall. That means having all the approvals, from the Council To the competitor, DG Competition, and why not, maybe in the future we can also try a contract-for-difference scheme for storage. We recognize this major need for the system,” explained Sebastian Burduja.
At the same time, the minister stated, before the summit, that he addressed to the Minister of the Environment, Mircea Fechet, the request that the Casa Verde program also include a storage component and found “a lot of openness” to it.
“What interests us, the Ministry of Energy, is to promote storage, otherwise we have an increasingly intermittent production of green energy. We also put the national energy system, the distribution area, but also the transport area in difficulty. So we must have a component of storage. Personally, I support this idea to include support for the storage component. From my point of view, it should be mandatory, but finally it is the minister’s decision,” stressed Burduja.
He mentioned that, according to the latest data from the National Energy Regulatory Authority, in Romania there are over 115,000 prosumers and over 1,500 MW of power installed in photovoltaic panels.