Slovenia plans to pour €3.5 billion into its power distribution system over the next 10 years to make it withstand the increased demand for electricity it expects will come with the green transition.
Drafted by the state-run electricity distribution system operator SODO, in cooperation with all five of the country’s distribution companies, the 10-year investment plan received the green light from the country’s Energy Agency.
The plan addresses the challenges posed by decarbonisation, decentralisation of electricity generation and the increasing use of electricity as the main energy product in transport or heating, SODO said last week.
Of the total investment, €2.5 billion or 72%, will be allocated to low- and medium-voltage networks, which, until now, have not received the necessary upgrades to face current scale and consumption. Of this, €1.2 billion has been earmarked for the low-voltage grid, while 12% will go to 110-kilovolt infrastructure and 8% to secondary equipment.
The new investment plan comes after the current push for renewable energy, especially solar, has exposed glaring weaknesses in the grid and left many households not having their solar rooftop projects approved by regulators due to insufficient grid capacity.
However, funding for the plan remains unclear for the time being.
Distribution companies are unlikely to have the capital to bankroll the plan partly because of the waivers on network fees that were recently put in place to bring down the cost of electricity and mitigate the cost-of-living crisis.
(Sebastijan R. Maček | sta.si)
Source: euractiv.com
