IPTO's Manousakis stresses importance of continuous improvement of RES management
The challenges created by the high penetration of RES in the management of the electricity system were outlined by the President and CEO of Independent Power Transmission Operator (IPTO), Manos Manousakis, at the 5th OT Forum, on Wednesday.
Regarding the total blackout that recently hit the Iberian Peninsula, Manousakis explained that this is a social issue affecting all of Europe, adding that the Greek authorities intervened immediately, given the rapid increase in the share of green energy in the domestic electricity generation mix.
According to IPTO, 15.8 GW of RES are now operating in Greece, up from 10.8 GW in 2023, with the photovoltaics connected to IPTO's high and extra-high voltage system having doubled to 7 GW from 3.5 GW in two years. Based on these data, he said, the management of the electricity system is becoming increasingly difficult as the picture changes every six months due to the increase in the production capacity of renewable sources.
In addition to the cuts in green energy on days with very high production and low demand, the head of IPTO focused on two more measures that need to be taken by next autumn, to maintain the stability of the system in these new conditions.
The first concerns the technical capability that Aggregators (groupings of agents in the power system) must acquire, which collectively hold a significant share of the installed capacity, in order to control the groups of units they represent, as if they were a single entity, whose production will rise or fall according to their offers in the market. In this way, he explained, these groups of parks will now operate collectively as distributed units in the system and production-demand balancing will not be done manually for several parks connected to the distribution network, as is the case today.
As a second measure, he highlighted the remote control of small parks from the distribution network Control Centre, an effort that, as he said, Hellenic Electricity Distribution Network Operator (HEDNO) is already proceeding with at an intensive pace.