Can you predict the future? Look at those graphs, I'm sure you can. The future needs much more #energystorage in our power systems. Bet you can predict it?
Let's see what yesterday, May 1st can tell us about the future:
- May 1st was a lovely sunny day, and a public holiday in many countries across Europe. Countries with high share of solar installations produced a lot of solar power but had low loads.
- Take Germany as an example at 12pm-1pm: With an installed solar power capacity of around 73 GWp, it had a solar peak production of around 40 GW. Other renewables added another 14 GW of power production and fossil generators produced another 6,5 GW. Only problem, the load in Germany was only around 43 GW.
- Power flows in Europe were impacted by this situation. I added below a picture from Frank Boerman's post on the situation yesterday (https://t.ly/KoFU2). Big solar countries like Germany, Netherlands and Belgium reversed power flows from importing in the morning to exporting at peak capacity in the evening.
- Lack of price convergence between European countries show, that power grids and more broadly market coupling between different price zones is maxed out.
- Interesting though that France, with a import/export swing of around 16 GW seems to be the key source of power market flexibility in Europe. Compared to the previous day, French nuclear reduced its output from around 40 GW the day before to around 29 GW during solar peak. Though looks like this 25% output reduction is all flex French nuclear can deliver.
- Interesting side note RTEs production data seems to indicate major curtailment of Wind in France. Anyone knows what's behind that?
- Just for reference, German nuclear power plants were not able to provide similar flexibility, call modulation in France, to the power system, so dear nuclear friends, please stop before you even start.
- With grids and French nuclear maxed out, in country flexibility should be key. Jean-Paul Harreman's post (https://t.ly/qTZqR) did exactly that, showing a lack of flexibility in German.
- Clear indication are the price spreads we saw in the German continuous Intraday Market, with two peaks above 4.000€/MWh yesterday.
So let's turn to the future:
- Germany is planning to add around 16 GW of solar in 2024, bringing solar capacity to 88 GW. The recently agreed solar package will accelerate solar build out in Germany, setting us up to get us to 215 GW of solar in 2030.
- This is great! We need to do it! But, what will we do, when the sun is shining?
-> It is very obvious that we need to add flexibility to our power system. Flexible charging of more EVs (aka. charge when the sun is shining), demand response, residential storage and most of all utility-scale #energystorage.
So, can you predict the future?
