Batteries, the great 'green' opportunity for Catalonia

BarcelonaCatalonia, despite some improvement, has been at the back of the queue for renewable energy development in the state. But now the Generalitat (Catalan government) has approved regulations that could be key to promoting green energy and, at the same time, could become a factor in ensuring system security and avoiding massive blackouts like the one that occurred on the Iberian Peninsula on April 28. A government decree declares the batteries as facilities of superior public interest..

This decree has been very well received by the renewable energy sector and, of course, by battery manufacturers. According to sources in the renewable energy sector, promoting storage would help a sector that is currently suffering from low wholesale electricity prices, with many hours of negative prices, which coincide precisely with the hours when photovoltaic power produces the most. In other words, many solar power generators are finding that their generation is unpaid.

Therefore, introducing batteries would allow the electricity generated during these hours of greatest sunlight to be stored (at least in part), so prices would not be so low. This stored electricity could be consumed at times of greater demand, that is, when prices are highest. defines prices: they are high at dusk, they fall during the night, there is a peak in the early morning, they level off again, and from the afternoon onwards they rise again. The graph looks like a duck. daily price chart.

The photovoltaic employers' association, Unef, has welcomed this decree from the Generalitat (Catalan government) with hope, providing it with robustness and flexibility. It is a transversal, technical decree without ideological content," says Salvador Salat, Unef delegate in Catalonia.

Salat talks about giving robustness and flexibility to the system. After the massive blackout of April 28, voices were raised blaming renewables for precisely the opposite, for oscillations that led to congestion and a total drop to zero.

Franco Comino, CEO of the German company Sonnen in Spain, is one of the top experts on batteries in the Member State and also on the energy commission of Pimec. Comino posted a post on the day of the power outages because the system had been activated in island mode. Comino has led projects such as Espacio Cero in Olot, the La Ballena Alegre campsite in Sant Pere Pescador (the most sustainable in Europe) and others, where photovoltaics are combined with batteries to achieve the energy self-sufficiency that exists in Catalonia, if the batteries massively and in a network, the system could be given a lot of robustness and flexibility.

Specifically, Comino is calling for a change in the primary regulation market. This market, he explains, is what allows the system's inertia and voltage to be maintained, and in Spain it is a closed market, controlled only by large electricity companies. In most of Europe, such as Germany, the European Union's most developed state of renewable energy, it is an open market. This market prevents system congestion and, as configured in the state, is based on rolling inertia—that is, turbines, whether nuclear, combined cycle, or hydraulic—to provide stability to the system. For this reason, he says, after the massive blackout, combined cycle gas production has increased despite excess renewable production for many hours of the day.

For Comino, in addition to rolling inertia, there is another concept, which is renewable inertia. It consists of many grid-connected batteries that can absorb excess production when they exist and feed electricity into the grid when not enough electricity is generated. This requires network digitalization and software Powerful. It's done in other countries, he says. Thus, any facility can reserve part of the battery (for example, 15%) for the system. "Obviously, the facility owner is compensated and, consequently, the user is empowered," he points out. "But in one second, with 1,000 batteries, 1 GW can be brought online, the equivalent of a nuclear power plant," he points out.