entso-e – Peter Fairley

European Grid Operators 1, Solar Eclipse 0

Solar forecast for March 20 via Energy-Charts.de, with previous days' generation — Solar forecast for March 20 from Energy-Charts.de, with prior days’ solar output

Weather forecasts calling for bright sun today across Europe drove up tensions in advance of the partial solar eclipse that blocked the sun’s rays and plunged much of the continent into a brief period of darkness this morning. Grid operators were bracing for record swings in solar power generation because of the celestial phenomenon. Some power distributors in Germany had warned of fluctuations in frequency, notifying customers and suggesting that they shut down sensitive equipment.

In the end, while clear weather made for some excellent eclipse viewing, the electrical story ultimately felt more like Monty Python’s radio coverage of the 1972 eclipse. As if audio coverage of a quintessentially visual event isn’t absurd enough, the Pythons closed their fictitious report in the ultimate anticlimax, as a sudden rainstorm swept in to spoil the solar spectacle. Europe’s interconnected power grid brought about an equally anticlimactic ending today by delivering rock-solid stability throughout the 2.5-hour eclipse. Continue reading “European Grid Operators 1, Solar Eclipse 0”

March 22, 2015September 21, 2018 by pfairley

Solar Eclipse Will Test European Power Grids

A partial eclipse of the sun headed for Europe next Friday has grid operators in a tizzy. On the morning of March 20 Europe’s skies will darken for the first time since solar power became a meaningful piece of some countries’ power supply, and the impact could be dramatic.

“It’s a very, very big challenge for the transmission system operators in Europe,” says Enrico Maria Carlini, Head of Electric System Engineering for National Dispatching at Rome-based Italian transmission system operator Terna.

The Brussels-based European Network for Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) judges in an eclipse impact analysis released last month that it poses a, “serious challenge to the regulating capability of the interconnected power system.”

While an eclipse markedly reduced solar generation in western North America last October according to energy tracking firm Opower, Europe’s far greater levels of solar power make for bigger stakes. ENTSO-E projects that the moon’s jaunt across the sun’s path next Friday could slash more than 30 gigawatts (GW) of solar generation in Continental Europe over one hour if clouds are scarce and solar generation is high. That’s the equivalent of turning off 30 big coal or nuclear power stations. Continue reading “Solar Eclipse Will Test European Power Grids”

March 13, 2015September 21, 2018 by pfairley

Europe and Turkey’s High-Power Embrace

Ethnic and economic tensions may have stalled Turkey’s longstanding bid to join the European Union, but electrical circuits can be color blind. As of September the alternating current on the Turkish power grid will flow in synchrony with Continental Europe’s, according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E), which took control of Europe’s power grids last summer.

Yesterday’s announcement means that Turkey can trade electricity with Europe and benefit from the bigger grid’s stability, in turn helping to stabilize the lines in neighboring Bulgaria and Greece. The link will run for at least one year, with power exchanges ramping up in stages.

Turkey’s integration provides hope for would-be regional developers in the Mediterranean, who face rising protectionism, ethnic tensions, and seemingly endless diplomatic bombshells from Israel and the Palestinian territories. The Middle East troubles caused the Union for the Mediterranean organized by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to delay a second summit scheduled to convene in Barcelona yesterday until November, according to the AP. Continue reading “Europe and Turkey’s High-Power Embrace”

June 8, 2010June 9, 2010 by pfairley

Saying Adieu to the Mighty UCTE

By summer the Union for the Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE), whose 240,000 kilometers of high-voltage lines connect 26 European countries, may cease to exist. Europe is not giving up electricity. Electrons will still flow on the world’s largest interconnection of power grids. Rather, the 57-year-old UCTE will be subsumed within a new and broader organization designed to, among other improvements, make Europe’s grids renewables-ready: the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E).

CEOs from 42 transmission system operator companies in 34 European countries unanimously decided to create the new association last month. Whereas UCTE was limited to ensuring the interoperability of largely self-sufficient national grids, ENTSO-E is to play a proactive role in coordinating grid development to create a truly European grid that can operate on a larger scale. This is exactly what’s needed as Europe increasingly seeks to widely distribute electricity generated from concentrated renewable resources such as wind power in the North Sea and Baltic Sea and Mediterranean solar power.

Moving power across regions implies a European-scale supergrid, while the European Commission (EC) has struggled simply to add small interconnections between the states. Last month for Spectrum Online I profiled the EC’s latest desperate attempt to overcoming inertia in transmission expansion: recruiting high-profile volunteers to sell the interconnections.

One of those volunteers, Władysław Mielczarski, the Polish electric power engineering expert whom the EC recruited to unstick projects connecting Poland to Lithuania and Germany, minced no words in describing his best efforts to get things as no substitute for European institutions dedicated to grid planning. “If we’re going to do a professional job on interconnection,” said Mielczarski, “we must have professional people working full time, and we must have more support from the commission.”

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