In Poland, energy storage facilities are necessary for the success of the energy transition based on weather-dependent renewable sources. “In large-scale storage we have about 1.5 GW, but for the National Power System to be effectively relieved by these, this value should be 12 GW,” says Radosław Walaszczyk from the Energy Regulation Office. The system also needs home energy storage. The URE expert stresses that it is necessary to investigate how large the market demand for them is.
“Energy storage is highly desirable in the National Power System, as the rapid development of renewable energy sources involves several challenges. These include periodic over-supply of renewable energy, which causes negative phenomena, such as non-market reductions in renewable generation, which is currently used by the transmission system operator. This green, clean electricity is then wasted, and energy storage can help solve this problem,” says Radosław Walaszczyk, director of the Department of Renewable Sources at the Energy Regulatory Office.
Experts indicate that renewable energy sources reduce costs, reduce emissions, and increase national energy security, and their further development is one of the most urgent needs of the Polish energy system. According to the ARE data, at the end of August this year, the installed capacity of RES in Poland reached 31.5 GW, which constitutes approx. 45% of the total power of all electric energy sources (70 GW). Photovoltaics still dominate (19.7 GW, i.e. about 62% of installed RES capacity) and wind (9.7 GW, i.e. about 30% of RES capacity). In the first eight months of this year, more than 96.7 thousand new RES installations with a total capacity of nearly 2.43 GW were added in Poland.
The increasing number of new installations also results in increasing generation from RES. The magazine “Energy Forum” points out that in October 2021, renewable sources produced 4.5 TWh of electricity, constituting one third of total generation of Polish power plants. Consecutive records of energy production from renewable sources are often associated with records of its reduction by network operators. The messages of the PSE about subsequent, compulsory restrictions on RES installation operation in order to balance the system are slowly becoming the norm. In practice, this means wastage of clean, cheap energy and large financial losses – according to the Energy Forum’s calculations in October, there was a need to non-market reallocation of generation units by the operator for 10 days, mostly for balance reasons.
“Energy storage, as one of the pillars of modern energy transformation, can help us so that green, clean energy is not wasted. They store energy when there is excess, store it and then release it when there is less of it in the system, so they can help stabilize, ensure balance of the National Power System,” says Radosław Walaszczyk.
Existing energy storage facilities are also one of the ways to increase the connection capabilities of renewable sources, which recently has become one of the biggest issues of the Polish transformation. According to the URE data, only last year energy companies negatively considered 7448 applications for the issuance of network connection conditions for planned generation units with a capacity of 83.6 GW, which meant an over 60% increase year on year.
“Energy storage will also facilitate the ordering of daily energy price fluctuations. It is not good if within the day these prices fluctuate very dynamically and all stakeholders are interested in them being predictable and as low as possible for consumers. And energy storage is exactly what will level out the daily price profile”, says the director of the Department of Renewable Sources in URE.
As he emphasizes, energy storage is necessary for the success of energy transformation based on variable, weather-dependent renewable sources.
“Energy storage is definitely one of the pillars of energy transformation and the demand for storage will grow,” says Radosław Walaszczyk. “At the moment we have about 1.5 GW in large-scale energy storage, but for the National Power System to actually be relieved by them, this value should be 12 GW.”
In Poland, the development of the energy storage market has accelerated significantly in recent years. This boom is evident in the prosumer segment, which can rely on subsidies in the My Current program, and for them home storage is a complement to household photovoltaics, increasing the level of self-consumption and reducing energy bills. Funding – including programs related to increasing energy efficiency – can also be acquired by entrepreneurs, for whom energy storage is a chance to increase the consumption of energy from their own generating sources, but also greater energy security and improving the quality parameters of electricity for technological processes. Therefore, interest in this segment is growing. However, large-scale storage facilities are also needed in the Polish system.
The URE report “Electricity Storage” indicates that in May, 12 energy storage facilities with a capacity of at least 50 kW were in operation. These are energy storage facilities indicated in the registers of the five largest distribution system operators and the transmission operator. Their total power is almost 1.5 GW. The largest storage facilities in terms of installed capacity are pumped-storage power plants, and half of the storage facilities use lithium-ion battery technology. Larger storage facilities – with a capacity of 10 MW – are subject to URE licenses. From February 2023 to May 2024, applications for 41 energy storage facilities to be fully integrated elements of the grid from six distribution system operators were submitted to the regulator, and the president of URE issued five positive decisions in this respect by May.
“We need both home storage facilities, which are used by prosumers, and large-scale ones. We must, above all, start with organizing the energy storage market and determine how much we need them on a large scale to stabilize the system. Just as we had a boom in photovoltaics, so it is now good for there to be a boom in energy storage, but it would also be good if it was well regulated,” emphasizes the director of the Department of Renewable Sources at the Energy Regulatory Office.
