The Serbian electricity system can balance 5.8 GW of variable energy sources – that is four times lower than the current 24 GW of demand for connecting wind farms and solar power plants to the network, Nebojsa Vucinic, Director of the Development Directorate at electricity transmission system operator EMS, said, speaking at the RES Conference 2023.
He added that the adoption of the Law on the Use of RES in 2021 has led to changes in the interest of investors in wind farms and solar power plants. By the end of April 2021, there had been 4,900 MW of wind farm requests and 400 MW of solar power plant requests processed, along with 400 MW of the already connected ones.
With five requests submitted before the adoption of the law, the number grew to 100 requests, of which 70 for solar power, whose installed power was 11 GW.
The demanded capacity of wind farms and solar power plants for connection has thereby increased four times, to over 20 GW in the past two years. He said that, at the moment, the requests for grid connection exceed 24 GW in capacity, and it is clear that there will be problems with the system if all the requests are realized. Therefore, EMS is planning to invest 900 million euros in an electricity transmission network in coming years.
The amendments to the law adopted in 2021 envisage that the system operator is able to postpone the connection of power plants to the system if it turns out that there are not enough balancing reserves. At the same time, the investors are given the option to avoid the postponement if they secure additional balancing capacities on their own or through another participant in the market.
