MPRA

mand, conventional plants start to produce electricity. Maintenance of such systems
is costly. For Germany, amount of EUR 590 million in 2006 was calculated by Erdmann
(2008). The use of fossil fuels is relatively easy and cheap only in case of
long-term balancing (i.e. days or week notice).
• Transmission of surplus from one location to another, this requires good interconnection
between locations. This goes back to the development of the grid and also
may require good collaboration between the states. In addition, it will increase the
grid balancing costs.
• Demand response, so when RES expected to produce low volume of electricity, large
industrial and commercial customers are paid by the grid operator to lower their
consumption of electricity by switching off machines and/or air conditioning etc.
The amount of payment must be properly calculated, nevertheless this method is
costly and difficult to implement. This method is relatively easy to implement in
medium-term notice (i.e. hours).
• Energy storage, surplus of produced RES-E is stored and when RES-E producer
cannot meet the demand stored electricity is fed into the grid. Probably the best
option in short notice (i.e. seconds to minutes).
The latter option is promising because prices for batteries have been falling.
For
example, prices of electric vehicle batteries are steadily decreasing.
The average cost
per kWh fell from some 1000 $ in 2010 (EUR 757.57, exchange rate is 1.32, which is
average monthly rate for 2010) to some 390 $ 9 in 2015 (EUR 354.55, exchange rate is
1.10, which is average monthly rate for 2010). The decrease is caused by technological
improvements as well as economies of scale. This is also driven by increasing demand for
electric vehicles. There are two types of storage: so-called ”behind the meter” and the
grid-scale storage.
9 See prev. note
9