Being a prosumer is a good thing. The policy of encouraging repeat customers is good, but it needs to be done directly. We have 900 MW of installed capacity. There are still several hundred MW coming from the latest AFM program dedicated to them.

The problems are not with them, but with the distribution companies. Every major distributor has found that during the day it has a surplus of several hundred MW, which it has nothing to do with, because it has no balancing capability.

If I’ve done the math, meaning I’ve installed (say) 3KW of photovoltaic panels on my house and have no storage, the electricity I’ve generated will likely be consumed by my neighbors’ refrigerators during the day. During the day, it can be seen that in the areas of houses with a young and active population, that is why they go to work, the consumption is small. If I have an agglomeration of houses with photovoltaic panels, it will probably provide the electricity needed for one block of houses. Thus, the electricity distributor will be forced to disconnect some of these consumers because the supplier cannot send them very far. Transformers are not bidirectional, that is, they are not able to raise the electricity produced in the medium voltage network for distribution in another zone.

Now, for fun, I raise the following problem: most of those who submitted their cases to the Environmental Fund do not know what awaits them. How will they clean their solar panels on their homes? If not, and they clean them, they will no longer produce the expected energy. How many years do they hope to operate the facility? What will they do after it stops working?

Let’s go back to the distribution company: if it doesn’t invest in storage, then it can be said that the state spent a little more money in vain, because the distribution networks are not able to take so much energy. It is clear that these companies are not ready to have so many smart devices {eg smart meters} capable of handling so much energy (and data), i.e. they are not digitized to handle such an avalanche of small producers.

The investment that distribution has to make seems quite large, and the price will increase, even for the small and medium-sized storage containers required. Probably, distribution companies will not be able to cope without a capacity of several hundred MW. There are already investments in storage. This is for Transelectrica, not for distribution. This means that the distributors have to invest several hundred million euros, and this money will be found in our accounts.

Storage is a problem of the security of the national electric power system

For several years, Romania has been producing green energy because it mostly has nothing to do with it, so it exports it. There are times when this intermittent and unpredictable energy is not available, and then we have to import it. Energy is imported, in particular, thanks to the burning of gas. The gas typically comes from Russia, is converted into electricity in other countries where taxes and duties are levied, and then we import it. This is nothing but a disguised import of Russian gas! This leads to an imbalance in the balance of payments: we export green and cheap electricity and import gray and expensive ones. Obviously, this also leads to higher electricity bills.

What shall I do? Thinking about storage systems. When we talk about large amounts of energy, in the order of thousands of MWh, the only solution is a hydroelectric plant with storage by pumping, that is, we have two storage lakes at different heights, when wind and solar plants produce much more than consumption, you pump water from the lower lake into the upper lake. When you run out of power, you let the water from above turn the turbines. In other words, electrical energy is stored in the potential energy of water.

The problem is that for 35 years they have been talking about the fact that Romania should build such a hydroelectric power plant. In the past, a feasibility study was carried out and it was decided that in the area of ​​Tarnica – Lapushest it is necessary to build several reservoirs located at different heights in order to equip them with installations that will perform the role of both turbines and pumps. The studies were redone a few years ago. Many years ago, the Ministry of Energy established a company to develop this important project for Romania. The company filed for bankruptcy last week. We don’t know the reasons, but we can suspect that if someone poked their nose into the company’s papers, we would see that all these years it had directors, secretaries, drivers, workers who did nothing. And if he had stuck his nose deeper, who knows what foul odors he would have come across. But, unfortunately, the issues of energy security were not understood by the decision-makers.

We don’t have it yet, but what can we do? I said that imported electricity is nothing more than a disguised import of Russian gas to which other countries have added their value added, duties, taxes and excises. We have gas, but there are no thermal power plants. To balance the system, it is cheaper to have several gas thermal power plants, with new technology, and not 60-70 years, which can start producing in a few minutes when there is a lack of energy. And it is true that the investment in several hundred MW of production is lower than the investment in several hundred MW of storage in hydroelectric power plants. And these power plants are being built even faster than two reservoirs with accompanying structures.

Storage is a regional geopolitical advantage

In order to be able to store through hydroelectric plants with pumped storage, you have to have the geographical conditions. Romania has them. Bulgaria has them. Hungary does not have the appropriate geography for such a project. Serbia has, but no money. Ukraine is at war with Russia, and its energy system is largely down. Bulgaria has such a power plant in operation (in addition, it is being reconstructed by a Romanian company), and is also investing in it at the expense of EU contributions. –

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