Portugal is to kickstart its energy storage sector by arranging its first ever dedicated auction next year, Energy-Storage.news can reveal.
João Galamba, secretary of state of energy, told this publication of plans to put forward 50-100MW worth of capacity for dispatchable renewables in 2020, at a date that has yet to be decided.
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“We want to keep it fully open, attract the best, most innovative technologies,” said Galamba, who replaced predecessor Jorge Seguro Sanchez in October 2018.
“It could be batteries, it could be anything else, as long as it’s renewable and dispatchable – we will let the market decide what the best solution is,” he added.
His statement follows recent calls by experts for Portugal to “urgently” move towards storage technologies, to help manage the annual 800–1,200GWh surplus in renewable production expected by 2020; power-to-gas options are seen by researchers as particularly promising.
PV auctions of 1.35GW (2019) and 700MW (early 2020)
The energy storage drive comes as the socialist government of prime minister Costa works to deliver a boom of PV solar, whose contribution last year (1.5% of national power use) was far outstripped by wind (23%).
Two PV-specific auctions this year and next will lay the foundations for Portugal's roadmap, which requires boosting PV capacity from 572MW in 2018 to 1.6GW by 2021 and 8.1GW-9.9GW by 2030.
Further details on the terms and time frames of the PV auctions, as revealed by the secretary of state, can be found on Energy-Storage.news' sister site PV Tech.