Alexopoulos Dimitrios

“DEVELOPMENT OF AN EVALUATION TOOL OF POLITICAL STEPS AND MEASURES TO INCREASE RES PENETRATION AND ADDRESS THE CHALLENGES POSED IN ELECTRICITY SYSTEMS AND ENERGY MARKETS”

The promotion of renewable energy sources is one of the objectives of the Union’s energy policy.

Directive (EU) 2018/2001 sets a binding target for the Union for 2030 that the share of energy from renewable sources in the Union’s gross final energy consumption is at least 32%.

In this context, the National Plan for Energy and Climate recently submitted to the EU set a national binding target of 31% for the contribution of RES to gross final energy consumption in 2030. Especially concerning the power sector, a 55% target was set for the contribution of RES to gross electricity consumption in 2030. This means that power stations from non-controlled RES (wind and photovoltaic stations) should rise from 6.4GW, expected to be installed by 2020, to 13,4GW by 2030.

Also, Directive (EU) 2018/2001 promotes the function of renewable self-consumers and introduces the function of renewable energy communities. Thus, consumers with a static role in the energy chain will be transformed into active consumers and at the same time producers of electricity from small RES units (roof photovoltaics, small wind turbines, etc.) or will participate as members in communities and they will consume electricity produced from RES stations of the community.

The large increase in the penetration of non-controlled RES and the new role of consumers create significant challenges but also problems in the management of electricity transmission and distribution systems and the functioning of electricity markets.

With the large increase in the penetration of power plants from non-controlled RES, the volatility and uncertainty of the residual load and the flexibility needs of the system increase. The main categories of flexibility sources are controlled power stations, storage, interconnections and demand response.

Also, redefining the role of consumers will lead to a high penetration of RES in the Distribution Network and to multiplying the participants in the electricity markets, resulting in technical challenges to the Network and increase of the complexity of the functioning of the markets.

In the context of the PhD thesis all the technologies and methods that help to address the above challenges and problems will be analyzed and a model for the overall benchmarking of the above different technologies and methods will be developed and proposed in order to present a decision-making tool for supporting the most appropriate schemes in a sustainable way.