Europe switches from gas to wind and solar

The aggravation of relations between Moscow and the West associated with the events in Ukraine has again intensified the search for an alternative to Russian gas as fuel for European power plants. One of the logical directions of this search was “green” energy. The peak of investment in it passed two years ago, but commissioning is still growing, and albeit locally, in test mode, but in some places the EU countries have already managed to ensure stable operation of the energy system using only “green” stations.

Photo: Alexander Chizhenok, Kommersant / buy photo

At the beginning of April, the European Commission adopted a set of recommendations for EU member states on changing the methodology of state support for renewable energy projects (RES). Countries should move from direct subsidies to competitive allocation and aim to achieve a 27% share of green sources in total output by 2030. At the end of 2012, according to ENTSO-E, in Europe this share was 14.1%.

Renewable energy is an industry that attracts a huge amount of investment in the world; in terms of volume, it has already become close to investments in the development of traditional hydrocarbon energy (see graph). However, the peak of investments occurred in 2010, when $279 billion was directed into the industry, according to the UNEP-Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. For the second year now, the volume of investments has been declining.

There are two reasons for the decline in investments. The first is a reduction or reformatting of government subsidies, which is what the recommendations of the European Commission, which is trying to combat high final prices for consumers, call for. According to the European Commission, electricity prices in the EU grew by an average of 4% per year in 2008-2012. In Denmark they reached $0.41 per 1 kWh, in Germany - $0.36, while, for example, in the USA they are only $0.13. In some countries, such as Bulgaria and Spain, the reduction of subsidies has actually stopped investment activity in green energy, while in others it has significantly reduced it.

Another reason is the reduction in the cost of equipment, primarily for solar stations, which led to a decrease in investment in this type of source by 23% ($104 billion) with an increase in inputs by 25.8% to 39 GW. The total volume of commissioning of “green” stations is also growing: renewable energy sources, according to the report, accounted for 43.6% of all new commissioning in the world in 2013, and the share in the total generation volume increased from 7.8% in 2012 to 8.5 %.

Is there life without gas?

Thus, reducing subsidies and investment does not mean slowing down the development of green energy. Moreover, it becomes especially relevant against the backdrop of worsening relations between Europe and Russia in connection with the events in Ukraine. On April 17, the European Parliament adopted a resolution declaring "the urgent need for a common energy security policy to reduce the EU's dependence on Russian oil and gas, including diversification of energy supplies, full implementation of the third energy package and the ability to suspend gas imports if necessary."

However, Europe does not yet have a real serious alternative to Russian gas (see Kommersant on March 17), just as there is no opportunity to radically reduce gas consumption by the energy sector in general. Even if so many “green” capacities are built in Europe that formally they can completely replace gas ones in terms of production volumes, it is technologically impossible to abandon the latter. The output of "green" stations needs to be balanced. The very nature of renewable sources dictates their instability. Thermal stations are forced to provide reserves and operate when there is not enough generation from renewable energy sources. But this does not pay for their existence: they produce little electricity, and the proceeds from its sale do not cover their costs. According to the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, currently 110 GW of thermal power plants in Europe (about 60% of the total installed capacity of gas plants) do not cover semi-fixed costs and could close within three years.

In order for gas thermal power plants to survive, the introduction of a capacity market - that is, payment for the fact of the existence of stations - is being actively discussed in Europe. In Russia it is provided for, and 14 out of 28 EU countries are already following or want to follow the same path. But in parallel, serious efforts are being made to find an alternative to thermal energy as a balancing power.

How to find balance

One possibility is to smooth out the peaks. Indeed, from the point of view of the energy system, only the balance of production and consumption at a given moment is important, and therefore, if reliability criteria are met, the absence of consumption is equivalent to the presence of generation. It is possible to force the consumer to reduce demand as a whole, but significant enterprises have already reduced it to the limit of economic feasibility. To push them to more radical steps, a demand response (DR) mechanism was invented - a simplified system for paying for non-consumption. The consumer makes a commitment to the system not to consume a certain amount of electricity during certain hours and receives a fee for this.

This mechanism is already operating within the PJM market, which covers 13 eastern US states. The consumer trades the possibility of not consuming during periods of emergency or high prices: he enters into a contract with a fixed period during which he is ready to switch off or reduce consumption to a certain level on command for a fixed number of hours. It can, for example, reduce the power of air conditioners, slow down or stop production, dim the lights, etc. The effect of this can be very significant: for example, on the day of peak demand in July 2010, PJM, by demanding the execution of DR contracts, received 2.5 GW of freed power for three hours.

In Russia, System Operator has long advocated the introduction of DR. But, as noted by the head of the supervisory board of the NP "Community of Energy Consumers" Alexander Starchenko, in order to build a demand response system it is necessary to introduce hourly power trading and trading it a day in advance, while in Russia trading is held only a year in advance, and the legislation provides for a transition to longer-term, four-year selections. Plus, he notes, Russia already has a power surplus, and it is unclear where to use the released power.

Another way to establish balance is to control several renewable power plants so that they balance each other. Together with “negative” generating capacity, distributed renewable sources are combined into a so-called “virtual power plant”. These are software-dispatching systems that, from the point of view of the power system, completely imitate a working power plant.

In Germany, seven years ago, scientists at the University of Kassel asked whether the country could survive only on renewable sources. Moreover, it was not only about stopping gas imports, but also a complete cessation of coal production simultaneously with the shutdown of nuclear power plants. In 2009, based on several plants at different green sources in different parts of Germany, they built a test virtual power plant at a scale of 1:10,000 of the country's needs. Within its framework, the main generation is provided by solar and wind power plants, excess generation from wind farms, which can overload the network, pumped storage capacity is accumulated, and when there is weak wind, biogas stations are turned on. The station operated successfully. As part of the Kombikraftwerk 2 project, the team proved that this virtual power plant can perform the function of frequency regulation, that is, it is sometimes able to react to a situation faster than traditional plants. The study participants believe that if the target indicators for the share of renewable energy sources in the energy balance are met, the technical feasibility of 100 percent generation from them will be achieved in Germany by 2050.

Save and make money

But in all models, one of the key issues remains the need to develop energy storage technologies. According to the IEA, in 2013 there was 140.98 GW of grid-connected storage capacity, of which the vast majority - more than 99% - was pumped storage capacity (PSPP). The rest is, for example, pneumatic storage (440 MW), chemical sodium-sulfur (304 MW), lithium-ion (100 MW) and a number of others.

PSPPs use cheap nighttime electricity to pump water into the upper basin, and when there is a shortage, they send it down through hydroelectric units, releasing electricity into the network. In Russia, one PSPP, Zagorskaya, has been built, and construction of Zagorskaya PSPP-2 is underway. In Russia, pumped storage power plants were initially built as satellites of nuclear power plants. When the plan for the development of nuclear energy was created in the USSR, says the head of System Operator Boris Ayuev, a decision was made to design nuclear power plants using cheaper technology, but at the same time pumped storage power plants were to be built to perform regulatory functions. “Three pumped storage power plants were built in the USSR: in Lithuania, in the Moscow region and in Ukraine, and now there is only one left,” he says. “As a result, we have thermal stations operating with a low capacity utilization factor, because they have to actively participate in regulation.” .

There must be an objective need for the construction of a pumped storage power plant. It is highest in power systems with a large share of either low-maneuverability or unregulated generation, as well as in large isolated power systems (for example, many pumped storage power plants were built in Japan), says Advisor to the Chairman of the Board of RusHydro, Ph.D. Semyon Laschenov (see interview). According to Mr. Ayuev, in Russia the development of pumped storage power plants must be specially supported through increased prices on the wholesale market.

Electric cars are more than just a means of transportation

Another type of accumulation and balancing relates to the electric vehicle market. This technology is ideologically close to torrent in IT: while electric cars are parked, connected to chargers, 10-20% of their battery power is used to take electricity from the network or send it to the network. The result is one very maneuverable storage device, which allows you to level out peaks in energy loads. According to Denis Tsypulev, deputy director of the business process standardization department of the Moscow United Electric Grid Company (MOESK), today the use of 1,000 thousand cars can provide the energy system with 3 MW of highly maneuverable power. Moreover, adapting a car to such use is very inexpensive, the expert emphasizes; Such use does not harm the car in any way. So far, the widespread use of the mechanism is hampered by the high cost of electric vehicles themselves and their low prevalence.

We have

In Russia, since 2013, a system for supporting renewable energy has been launched through the wholesale market, when for each type of “green” energy a competition is held for the right to conclude a contract for the supply of power, which covers construction costs with a guaranteed return on investment. In total, it is planned to build about 6 GW of renewable capacity by 2020. A system for supporting “green” stations in the retail market is also being developed - networks are required to purchase the electricity they generate to compensate for their losses.

But in general, the attitude towards renewable energy sources in Russia is skeptical. “I wouldn’t rely on the sun and wind: there are physical limitations, and they are unpromising for industrial energy,” says Ivan Grachev, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Energy. “They will never be cheap. We support their local use, for example, in Kamchatka for replacing diesel fuel." According to the deputy, the optimal amount of renewable energy sources in the world is 5% of all generating capacities, and Russia needs to develop small hydroelectric power stations, biofuels, and tidal power stations from them. Boris Ayuev believes that in Russia, unlike Europe, which is trying to reduce dependence on energy resources that it does not have, the grounds for subsidizing renewable energy sources are debatable. “It may be worthwhile to subsidize them as innovative technologies as part of creating an environment for research into new types of equipment,” he says. But both Mr. Ayuev and Mr. Grachev insist that Russia should develop technologies for storing electricity and power, including on an industrial scale.

Natalia Skorlygina, Yuri Barsukov

Green alternative to red