Recently, DEPA Commercial, Greece's largest natural gas supplier, has secured a €390 million ($423.19 million) loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to build solar parks across the country.
DEPA Commercial plans to build photovoltaic power plants in western Macedonia, Thessaly and central Greece. The loan will help DEPA finance more than two-thirds of the planned investment in new solar power plants over the next four years, totalling around €500 million.
When these projects are put into operation in the future, they will add about 800WM of renewable energy to the Greece grid, which is equivalent to the electricity consumption of about 278,000 households in a year.
Theodoros Skylakakis, Minister of Environment and Energy of Greece, said: "Such investments help to further penetrate renewable energy into Greece's energy mix, and the benefits are manifold. These include reducing the cost of electricity for consumers and, of course, enhancing energy security, thereby enhancing the continent's energy independence. ”
Greece's plan is to increase the installed capacity of renewable energy to 25GW by 2030, and the share of renewables in final energy consumption to 35%. Solar and wind energy, the main drivers of renewable energy growth in Greece, are experiencing unprecedented expansion.
The share of renewable energy in Greece's electricity production reached a record 57% in 2023, compared to 50.12% in 2022. Photovoltaic power generation accounts for 18.4% of its national electricity production, ranking first in Europe. This is more than double the EU average (8.6%) and more than three times the global average (5.4%).
In 2023, Greece will add 1,591MW of new PV capacity, accounting for 74% of the new renewable energy capacity.
By the end of 2023, more than 72,500 photovoltaic systems had been installed in Greece. Among the newly installed capacity, the scale of more than 1MWp accounted for 40.2%; 10-1000KWp accounted for 56.6%; 10KWp accounted for 3.2%.
How to solve the problem of excess green power in the power grid?
This year, the share of renewable electricity in Greece is expected to increase further. But a tricky question then arises: how can Greece cut excess green electricity when the power system cannot accommodate it?
In a recent webinar of the Greece Photovoltaic Association (HELAPCO), one of the participants said that the curtailment rate of green power projects is expected to reach 5% by the end of 2024 and further increase to 10% the following year.
According to the Green Tank in Greece, power generation in the first four months of this year was 308GWh, which has increased to 515GWh in July. Despite the increase in summer electricity demand in Greece, it still had to cut 85GWh in June and July.
Without cells, PV may face a 20% curtailment rate in the future. Pantelis Biskas, a professor at AUTH University in Greece, expects 15 to 16 percent of wind power generation and 20 percent of photovoltaic power generation to be affected by 2030.
Or will usher in the growth stage of battery energy storage
Obviously, energy storage is a good idea. But Greece seems too late to turn its attention to energy storage.
Biskas said energy storage capacity must reach 7 GW to 8 GW by 2023 to reduce curtailment to 2% to 4% and keep consumer energy costs low.
Faced with the growing curtailment of electricity, the Greece government is revising the National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) targets, which include adjusting energy storage capacity targets, and will try to address this problem by encouraging investment in energy storage.
So far, Greece has deployed only one 1GW standalone front-meter storage project, with two successful tenders (700MW in total) and the first projects expected to be completed in 2025. The third tender is about to begin, for battery energy storage systems in the former coal mining area. Under the 1GW plan, the winning energy storage projects will receive public subsidy support.
In July, Greece's Minister of Environment and Energy, Theodoros Skylakakis, told a local energy conference: "Greece has abundant renewable energy resources, and in order to benefit from this, Greece should accelerate the development of energy storage." ”
Skylakakis said the government is working on a plan to open up the battery storage market in two ways in the future. Allows the deployment of behind-the-meter battery energy storage systems along existing PV plants. Second, it allows the deployment of stand-alone front-of-meter battery energy storage systems without public subsidy support.
Chinese companies help development
Previously, JinkoSolar also signed a letter of intent with kIEFER in Greece to supply SunTera with large-scale battery storage for Athens International Airport (AIA), supporting its commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2025. Upon completion, AIA will operate one of the largest self-generated systems in the world's airport facilities and will be the world's first 100% spontaneous international airport.
Frank Niendorf, General Manager of JinkoSolar Europe, said: "We are delighted to partner with kIEFER to usher in a new era of solar energy storage systems in Greece. This landmark project is the first utility-scale energy storage system to be installed alongside a PV system in Greece, and we are excited to embark on this journey with partners like kIEFER who are committed to the green transition through innovation, which is fully in line with our vision to take responsibility for a sustainable future by providing one-stop solutions for clean energy." ”