Friday 10 July 2015
Energy Regulatory Office forecasts the electricity demand for the following 15 years
At
the beginning of the year, in order to fulfill obligation imposed by the law, The
President of the Energy Regulatory Office pursued series of interviews and
questionnaires to collect the development plan from energy companies. Every
three years, all companies owning production units with capacity higher than 50
MW are obliged to report their plans of development for next 15 years. Year
2014 was the first year of introduction of modified rules for determining and
accounting for reserve power, in order to create a support mechanism for
maintaining proper system of excess capacity.
Data
on the development plans was collected from the generators as well as
distributors and transmission network operators. All the information enabled
the regulatory office to draw conclusions regarding the development of the
power market in the next 15 years and to estimate if the growing electricity
demand can be covered by the national production or there will be a need for
imports from abroad.
Analysis
of data obtained indicated that in the years 2014-2028 energy companies are
planning to put into operation over 18 GW of capacity (10,5 GW are confirmed by
energy companies, remaining part is a calculation of the transmission network
operator and related mainly to investments in the wind farms). In the same time, the
number of planned withdrawals of capacity during this period is about 5.2 GW. Summing up, the total number of available capacity should be around 13 GW.
Wind
farms and coal-fired/gas-fired production units are the most frequently planned
investments between 2014 and 2028. Despite
high interest in the power production from renewables ( onshore wind ),
investments with the advanced stage of development are those that are
coal-fired. It is worth noting that examined energy companies are not submitted
in their projections of nuclear energy and offshore wind farms, despite international tendency.
The
analysis of the future demand of electricity in Poland expresses dangers of the
insufficient energy production. Results showed that the potential deficit of
the available capacity, compared to the peak power, may occur primarily during
the winter months. In particular, the largest available capacity deficit may occur
in the period from 2014 to 2017. Nonetheless, the deficit should be covered by
the power of available domestic power stations that were not covered by
this study. In assessing the possibility to cover peak demand for power
generation by sources covered by the survey, it should be noted that the
available capacity of these sources does not include: generating units
belonging to energy companies not included in the survey (mainly self production), agreements on
reduction of demand for electrical power and the
possibility of importing power from abroad.
In comparison to the survey conducted by ERO in 2011, there has been indicated a decrease in forecasted peak demand for electric power (most likely due to the new technologies used in appliances which increase energy efficiency; not decreased consumption as such). Long-term balancing of electricity production with the demand for the energy has improved. Lower forecast peak demand for power, as well as the introduction of the transmission system operator additional service system (cold reserve intervention and modification of operational services reserve power) definitely contributed to the stabilizing the whole system and provided final customers with less interrupted and cheaper electricity.
Thanks to the evaluation like that, Poland can take strategic steps in long-term planning of its energy management. One important aspect is plan its own energy security and ensure that the production capacity can cover the country`s demand.
From another side, Poland, considering its location and EU plans to create energy union, should take an advantage of everything it has to offer and start trading electricity with its neighbours. Keeping in mind excessive investments in RES power plants all over Europe, Poland could modernize its coal plants ( so that their emissions do not negatively contribute to the air pollution level) and provide to its neighbours baseload power, which RES cannot ensure. Furthermore, planned opening of the Swinoujscie LNG Terminal could provide another trading option, this time of gas.
Definitely, conducting such research on the regular basis will provide policy makers and strategic planners with essential information needed to decide the direction Poland should follow with its energy management. It is a great starting point and an indication that Polish power market is more and more liberalized, with more transparent data and more competitive environment - what will surely increase the quality of services offered to end customers - who this system is meant to serve.
All the data has been
retrieved from the Official Website of the Energy Regulatory Office and is
based on the data from the latest “Biuletyn” ( Newsletter).
Official Website of ERO: http://www.ure.gov.pl/
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