Report: Old power grids may slow Europe's clean energy boom

(CN) — Europe’s race to quit fossil fuels and power its future with renewable energy faces a basic problem: In many places, power grids may be unable to handle all the electrons coming online from new wind turbines and solar panels.

This conundrum was highlighted in an analysis released Wednesday by Ember, a London-based energy think tank.

The report focused attention on the complex problem of “grid congestion” at the heart of the green tech revolution taking shape around the world as solar panels, wind turbines and storage batteries become increasingly more affordable.

Ember’s analysis of 20 European Union nations found “grid bottlenecks” might prevent the use of more than 120 gigawatts of power generated from renewable energy projects on the planning books. Moreover, the assessment was likely low because it did not include seven EU countries, including Germany and Italy, that do not publish grid capacity data.

That’s a huge amount of power at risk of getting “stranded,” Ember said. A gigawatt of power is equal to a billion watts.

To put 120 GW into perspective, it is roughly the equivalent to the power generated by 60 Hoover Dams, or 300 million typical rooftop solar panels or a solar farm the size of New York City.

To reach its conclusions, Ember compared a country’s grid capacity to its plans for power system expansion by 2030.

“This report serves as a critical reminder of how grid capacity constraints are becoming a major bottleneck in Europe’s clean energy transition,” said Robert Pietzcker, an expert on renewable energy at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He was not involved in the study.

“It underscores the risks to both the expansion of renewable energy and the electrification of demand — two cornerstones of the transformation,” he added, writing in an email.

The EU is in the midst of an impressive energy overhaul as the 27-member bloc invests heavily in renewable energy. Last year for the first time, the EU produced more electricity from solar panels and wind turbines than power plants fed by coal and natural gas.

The EU has set a legally binding target of reaching “net zero” by 2050, a scenario where its 450 million people and $22 trillion economy are no longer adding to the greenhouse gas load in the atmosphere.

But getting there isn’t just erecting more and more photovoltaic panels and towering wind turbines.

All these new electrons, many generated in out-of-the-way places, will need to be transported to consumers — and that can be tricky and expensive because it involves new transmission lines and towers, new substations and distribution lines, and lots of planning and contending with angry residents.

Ember said “limited grid capacity is already slowing down projects” in many EU countries and that “grid development has not kept up with the speed of the energy transition.”

“Large volumes of renewables remain stuck in connection queues, manufacturers face multi-year delays to expand production, and data center developers relocate to regions with more secure and faster connections,” the report said. “Rising costs to manage grid congestion, ultimately borne by consumers, add further pressure.”

The report said expanding grid capacity “will determine the success of Europe’s mission to wean itself off imported fuels and expand its industrial base.”

Pressures on grid systems will only get worse as the EU carries out ambitions to revive its industries in the face of growing global instability and at the same time keep pace with technological advances by installing lots of new data centers. Also, electricity demand is expected to rise as heat pumps in buildings and electric vehicles become more common.

“Without rapid and ambitious intervention on grids, Europe’s security and competitiveness objectives risk being undermined,” the report said.

Ember identified a lack of high-voltage transmission lines as the biggest shortfall and estimated two-thirds of the 158 GW in renewable energy plans it examined “may not materialize as projects will be unable to connect to the grid network.”

It said the rest of the projected 120 GW in stranded power, about 16 GW, would likely be caused by shortfalls in distribution lines, which are lower-voltage lines carrying power from substations to homes and businesses. Constraints with distribution lines may also slow the rollout of rooftop solar panels, the think tank said.

Austria, Bulgaria, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia are the countries where the most grid work needs to be done, it found.

“In these countries, available grid capacity can accommodate less than 10% of renewables planned by 2030,” the report said.

It added that a “grid capacity crunch” would likely become apparent by 2028 in several EU countries and that the Netherlands is already feeling this effect.

Ember said laying more power lines isn’t the only solution and that the clean energy logjam can be lessened in part through so-called “non-wire solutions.”

Over the past three decades, a suite of hardware and software technologies have been developed to make grids “smarter” by increasing the capacity, efficiency, and reliability of existing electrical networks. These advances are lumped together by the term grid-enhancing technologies, or GETs.

While building new power lines is essential for the long term, it’s a process that can take over a decade and cost billions of dollars. GETs, on the other hand, can be deployed in a matter of months to unlock significant hidden capacity on grids.

Ember said a combination of GETs and regulatory changes allowing more flexibility in contracts between grid operators and renewable energy developers can go a long way to increasing Europe’s grid capacities. The EU has passed regulatory changes for electrical grids.

Ember noted that the International Energy Agency estimates such measures could unlock between 140 GW and 185 GW of capacity across Europe.

Pietzcker said GETs and flexible connection agreements are already “proving effective” in some places in Europe and “demonstrating that rapid progress is within reach.”

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau