Grid Booster & Other Use Cases in the Interest of System Stability

Recording of Tuesday, June 18, 2024 | The smarter E Europe Conferences 2024 | Conference Program | Language: English | Duration: 12:15 .

Grid Booster Project Aims to Enhance System Security and Integration of Renewable Energies in Germany by 2025 Amidst Rising Congestion Management Efforts

The speaker discusses the grid booster project, aimed at enhancing Germany's electricity grid stability amid increasing renewable energy (RE) generation. With Germany's nuclear phase-out and a target to achieve 80% RE by 2030 and complete coal phase-out by 2038, there is a significant shift in power generation towards the north while industrial load centers remain primarily in the west and south. This imbalance leads to congestion management challenges, notably with onshore wind curtailment up over 100%. The German regulatory authority reported a 14% increase in congestion management efforts as of late 2023. To address these issues, besides ongoing DC transmission line expansions like Suplink and Ultranet, innovative measures such as dynamic line rating are being implemented under the 'Nova principles'. The grid booster acts as an "airbag" for increased line utilization without compromising system security. It does this by shifting from preventive to reactive system operations; activating only when faults occur to instantly stabilize the network. A groundbreaking event marked progress toward its implementation set for operation by 2025 with a capacity of delivering immediate support during outages before conventional plants can take over.

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Speaker

Thomas Hohnholz
Manager Strategy & Business Development
TransnetBW GmbH
Germany

Talk of session: Use Cases: New Challenges, New Opportunities - Explore the Potential

Energy storage is not an end in itself. The focus is usually on the economic benefits. Previous use cases are often not economically viable. In many cases, CAPEX and OPEX are still too high in relation to the yields. However, we are observing that the market is changing. New framework conditions and/or technical challenges offer opportunities for new types of storage use cases. The transformation of the energy system is giving rise to new use cases. For example, we are already seeing how grid bottlenecks are leading to critical conditions in the electricity grid. In response, transport grid operators are setting up battery storage systems known as grid boosters to test how they can use them to eliminate grid bottlenecks. But there are also many other storage options. This session will give you an insight into new projects and applications for storage systems.

Further Talks of this session: