As we all know, the energy transition is taking place through an increase in production from renewable sources. We also know that these sources are intermittent, that they cannot be scheduled according to demand, and the topic of storage is more pressing than ever. For example, a country like China, the world’s top investor in renewables and biggest manufacturer of wind turbines and photovoltaic panels, wastes high percentages of its green production. In 2018, in Xinjiang, nearly one quarter of all the energy generated by wind was wasted and in 2017, in Gansu, one third of all renewable production went unused. However, very few people know terms like implicit storage or curtailment: the latter, highly known to experts, indicates the non-use of renewable capacity for reasons not deriving from the absence of wind or sun, but those which are technical or regulatory in nature. These are topics addressed by the New York State University of Albany professor, Richard Perez, one of the top international experts in the sector of solar energy, who recently attended the Terna Tech Talks, a digital internal communication event where the operator of the Italian national transmission grid hosts various high-profile scientific and institutional panellists in relation to topics of great interest to the company.
Welcomed by Antonio Geracitano, the Terna Manager for Stakeholder and Academic Relations, Perez presented two case studies conducted on TSOs in the United States and Switzerland, demonstrating that it is worth focusing on photovoltaic more and more as «it is rapidly becoming one of the least expensive technologies to generate electricity», transforming it from intermittent energy to low-cost on-demand electricity. How? Through something called "implicit storage", namely a mix of «overbuilding and curtailment, of optimisation of production as well as reduction, if necessary and appropriate, of that same production». According to the professor, this supply modelling, obtained through a proactive reduction associated with the excess supply of photovoltaic energy, is essential for mitigating intermittence and providing a constant production of solar energy at the lowest cost.