Dumitru Chisăliţă, AEI: "We have certain networks that cannot carry as much electricity as people want to consume in the evening"

The current situation we are facing is based on several major systemic causes, claims Dumitru Chisăliţă, president of the Intelligent Energy Association.

Mr. Chisăliţă told us: "The first is the lack of electricity transport capacity on certain networks, generally neighborhoods, streets or certain areas, due to the chaotic approach to the development of consumption in the last 30 years and due to the fact that no upgrading has been done in terms of installed power or how much an apartment actually consumes compared to when it was built, i.e. the 60s-70s-80s. We have certain networks that cannot carry as much electricity as everyone wants to consume at 6, 7 or 8 p.m. The second problem is related to sources. On the one hand, the national sources - because we are used to putting all the sources in the same situation, regardless of whether we are talking about wind, solar - and we think that we have energy from them anytime and anyway. It's not like that. Now the authorities have realized that there are times when Romania usually does not consume, it does not have a history to analyze, especially regarding the consumption peak during the summer, which did not exist in our country. Evening consumption cannot be covered by wind and solar production capacities, because they are no longer able to cope. Normally, we used to have 2000 or even 3000 Megawatt hours produced per day by wind, and now during the hot season we have not been able to do even 1000 MW hours for many days, which has led to a difference between production and consumption that has increased these days . Moreover, security sources that can work regardless of the weather and regardless of outside temperatures are not enough either. This has behind it causes that are also systemic. When you come with insecure energy - such as wind or solar energy, you must necessarily have a capacity to either generate energy in reserve or store it. We did not respect this rule and here we are in the current situation".

The President of AEI showed that another cause is imports during the evening, because the situation would have been different if the consumption peak in our country had been in the middle of the day.

Dumitru Chisăliţă specified: "If we had a profile with a consumption peak at noon, it would be much healthier to import than to produce anything, because in that interval the imported energy would be very cheap. Unfortunately, we have the peak of consumption in the evening, when everyone wants to consume: Hungarians, Serbs, Bulgarians, and those from the Republic of Moldova, but also those from Ukraine. That is why import prices during the evening are very high. This is a systemic matter and is not solved by removing a group or introducing a generation group into the national energy system. Such a measure only solves the problem in the short term, for a day or a maximum of a week. Especially since for a month and a half the Ukrainians have been importing a lot of energy from Western European countries, after the Russians destroyed several of their production capacities, which led to an increase in the price of electricity."

As for remedying the current situation, the energy expert argues that in the short term the solution is to reduce consumption due to insufficient capacities in the energy production sector.

The President of AEI is categorical: "There is no other option; reducing consumption is the only way. At the national level we have two options: reducing consumption and coming up with complementary sources of energy. But this measure is an emergency measure, with which you get through the week at most. In the medium and long term, we need to describe what the new model of the energy system is, and on it - which probably means development of production capacity, storage capacity, reserve capacity, transport capacity, interconnection capacity - we can really build a system that is plausible to withstand under all conditions and in all situations. However, this is being built over a period between 5 and 15 years and needs investments worth several hundred billion euros".

Dumitru Chisăliţă also states that a much cheaper solution would be to move the consumption peak, but unfortunately this is misunderstood and ridiculed, although in the opinion of the energy expert, the current consumption peak affects energy safety and security and makes energy bills more expensive. He argues that moving the consumption peak has the least impact on the price of a bill, without making investments that must be amortized and paid for over time by consumers.