El Bonus is a licensed family-owned energy trader. The main activity of the company is purchasing and balancing electricity from RES plants. The company has a team of professionals with more than 14 years of experience in the free electricity market, who managed to build one of the largest and most reliable standard balancing groups in Bulgaria. Stefan Gugushev is the Chairman of El Bonus.
Mr. Gugushev, can you describe the key advantages of incorporating energy storage solutions into energy trading and how they can contribute to enhancing grid stability and reliability?
Significant electricity storage needs are currently emerging, mainly due to the large expansion in the construction of new capacities with PV technology. The issue has two aspects - financial and technical. The financial aspect is driven by the relatively low stock market prices of electricity at and around midday. This is due to the oversupply of electricity in the sunny hours and the reduction in demand due to the many newly built self-consumption power plants for many consumers. This financial aspect can be arbitrated/regulated by storing electricity in the cheap hours and returning it to the grid in the expensive hours. As regards the technical aspect, the issue is related to the electricity grid. According to the balance of the grid and electrical engineering rules, stating that at any given time the generation on the grid must be exactly equal to the consumption, more and more problems are occurring on weekends, and on weekdays during the midday and around midday hours. During these periods many PV power plants are working and on sunny days the grid receives a very large amount of electricity, while there is no consumption on the other side. The balance is disturbed, and the solution is to use either consumer regulators or electricity storage. Otherwise, the grid operator starts limiting generation of energy by directly shutting down the PV plants.
What specific challenges or limitations could the implementing of energy storage technologies impose within the Bulgarian energy market, and how can these be addressed or mitigated?
The challenges of implementing storage systems are in relation to the grid. What is needed, is implementing Smart Grids type of “intelligent” electricity grid. Otherwise, partially, the full potential of electricity storage systems cannot be exploited, and the desired results related to loss reduction and efficient use of electricity cannot be obtained. The electricity system in Bulgaria, as in almost all countries, is built on a centralised basis by large power plants with large capacities and energy flows from these large plants to the consumers. Currently, due to the deployment of renewable energy sources, energy flows are starting to return to the grid and flow in the reverse order, leading to supply uncertainty and deterioration of systematic services and of the quality of electricity, as well as increased losses. This means that unless a long-term grid development plan is made for Smart Grids, the desired effect and outcome of the implementation of electricity storage systems will not be obtained.
With the growing emphasis on renewable energy sources, how does El Bonus see the role of energy storage evolving in Bulgaria's energy landscape, and what strategies do you have in place to capitalize on this trend while minimizing potential risks?
El Bonus Ltd. perceives the challenges of deploying electricity storage technologies as an opportunity to actively manage our balancing group, as well as perform certain arbitrage activities on the energy exchange to increase the revenues of manufacturers and to reduce consumer costs. Our strategy is to develop customer-centric systems to manage these processes under the best conditions for our customers and optimize their generation and consumption. We have many customers who are both consumers and producers. For them, it is important to run automated processes for energy exchange arbitrages. Potential risks are related to the reverse effect of balancing and the increase in balancing costs due to poor synchronization and time interval management of storage systems, and the release of electricity at the right moments. Instead of benefits, financial damage and increased balancing costs are likely to occur. This is why we carry out these processes with great caution and measure action with manageable risk.