THE SLOVAK Electricity Transmission System (SEPS) is working on a new study about renewable energy sources (RES). Apart from others, the study should give an answer to the questions on the future of construction of new wind and large solar power stations in the country. In Slovakia, SEPS operating the national electricity grid is one of the authorities whose approval is needed when building and phasing in new electricity production facilities. The study should be complete by the end of the year, the SITA newswire reported.
“Results of the study will then be assessed and we expect that its conclusions and recommendations might be known during the first quarter of 2015,” Norbert Deák from SEPS told the vEnergetike.sk portal dedicated to the energy sector.
For now it is not known whether the new study will assume construction of new wind power stations.
“The aim of this study is to analyse influences of power generating sources joined in distribution systems on Slovakia’s national grid,” said Deák, adding on the basis of results of these influences there should be set a maximal possible total installed capacity of electricity generating facilities in order these do not endanger safe and reliable operation of the national grid.
Presently SEPS follows a study from 2012.
Construction of wind turbines was halted in Slovakia at the end of 2009, while solar power stations followed a bit later. Investors who were members of the Slovak Wind Power Association (ZVES) planned to build approximately 290 wind power units in Slovakia. The total installed capacity of these wind power turbines was expected to reach 670 megawatts. However, not all companies interested in building wind turbines in Slovakia were members of the association and there might have been even more wind park projects in the pipeline. Nowadays the most known wind ‘park’ is in Cerová, where four turbines stand.
SEPS considers solar and wind power an unstable power source with large fluctuations in production, and thus it includes them among unpredictable renewable sources of electricity and are thus expected to require back-up capacity. According to SEPS, uncontrolled construction of wind or solar power stations may endanger operational security and reliability of the national grid and can start an unsustainable pressure, which cannot be estimated in advance, on the rise of final prices of electricity for end consumers of electricity in Slovakia.
