The authors of the report Roadmap for heat storage in Poland point out that the generation of energy from weather-dependent renewable energy sources is growing year by year – in 2023 we had a 23.7% share of weather-dependent renewable energy sources in the national power system. In cooperation with the heating industry (survey) and experts, they describe the currently dominant technologies: short- and long-term heat storage (including seasonal) and low- and high-temperature (in particular in the context of changes in the electricity market). They analyze the needs of: prosumers, district heating, industry and energy.
Read more
Will the newest heat pumps effectively heat older homes?
How energy and heat storage can change the problem of surplus electricity production from renewable energy sources
The President of the Institute for Renewable Energy, Grzegorz Wiśniewski, presented the conclusions from the report, including those concerning the basic function of a heat storage facility, which is to balance the demand and supply of electricity and heat in a daily or seasonal cycle, as well as to manage periodic surpluses of electricity from RES by using surplus electricity in cycles consistent with the price profiles of dynamic tariffs and the dynamics of wholesale prices.
Heat storage is currently the most economically justified way of utilizing both hourly, daily and seasonal surplus energy from so-called weather-dependent RES – emphasized Grzegorz Wiśniewski. – By 2030, domestic heat storage tanks and seasonal heat storage in district heating can utilize 18 GW of surplus energy from RES during peaks and in the summer season, protecting them from being switched off by operators and from negative electricity prices, while providing green heat to its recipients at a competitive price.
The IEO President also devoted attention to electrode boilers – considered the most advantageous solution in heating – especially recommended where there is no possibility of implementing other investments (lack of gas network, biomass resources, areas for RES investments).
Read more
In Germany, renewable energy is at a record level
Among the key recommendations, President Wiśniewski mentioned, among others, the practical implementation in Poland of the NZIA procedure on the establishment of a framework of measures to strengthen the European ecosystem of production of emission-neutral technologies and the removal of formal and legal restrictions in the scope of environmental procedures, exemption of PTES seasonal heat storage facilities from taxation in their entirety with the 2% property tax rate.
The role of heat storage in the effective management of energy surpluses
The Deputy Minister of Climate and Environment, Urszula Zielińska, in her presentation referred to the speeches of the MPs:
When during parliamentary debates, skeptics of the transformation keep repeating the question ad nauseam: what to do when there is no wind and no light? – I respond that a much bigger challenge today is a completely different question: what to do when there is too much wind and too much light?
And she suggested a solution – for the stabilization of the entire energy system, the role of heat storage in the effective management of energy surpluses is crucial. Renewable energy sources and energy storage are one of the three pillars of the transformation of heating, which the minister mentioned. The others are: energy efficiency and digitalization. The goal of the state's energy policy is that by 2040 all heat needs in the economy are covered by district heating and low- and zero-emission individual sources.
Read more
New Holland FR Forage Cruiser forage harvesters with new cabin and upgrade package
Minister Zielińska also provided the latest data on the impact of air pollution caused by, among others, low-level emissions on our health – according to research by Oxford University, 90,000 Poles die from this annually! Unfortunately, Poland is in the top 15 countries in the world that incur the highest costs of air pollution – this amounts to PLN 100 billion annually.
Dorota Zawadzka-Stępniak, president of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, emphasised that with the development of distributed renewable sources in the network, the importance of heat storage will increase.
They have a chance to become an important element stabilizing the operation of the network, especially since – as analyses indicate – this solution is many times cheaper than energy storage. And you can get funding for them from the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management in programs for heating, including e.g. the program "RES – heat source for heating" and programs supporting cogeneration and in the next edition of the program "Mój Prąd 6.0", where energy storage, including heat, has become a mandatory element of the application.
Barriers to the development of heat storage in Poland
The report partners, experts appearing in the industry panel, raised issues related to the role of heat storage in their companies, optimization of the heating system, the use of electrode boilers for heat production, the electrification of heating, the decarbonization of heating systems, the use of waste heat, energy transformation, the idea of shared storage facilities by housing or energy cooperatives, the introduction of new regulations in the area of the energy market and construction law, barriers to the development of heat storage facilities (lack of land for investment or their high investment costs, low knowledge of issues related to energy storage facilities among heat users, local government officials, as well as heating companies, lack of professional knowledge regarding the design, location, and selection of storage facilities among architects, designers, and builders).
District heating with the potential to store energy and heat
An extremely important aspect discussed in the report is heat storage in district heating. This segment, according to the authors of the report, has the greatest potential for the use of heat storage, especially seasonal storage, while achieving synergy in the scope of the largest weather-dependent RES generation and heat demand in heating systems.
Based on research conducted by the Institute for Renewable Energy, it is estimated that the heat storage potential in the heating sector is 57.4 GWh/day, and taking into account technical limitations and land availability, the real potential is 6651 GWh/year. The greatest potential is possessed by heating companies with a capacity of 10–50 MW, of which there are as many as 178 in Poland.
On the one hand, thanks to the use of heat storage, it is possible to achieve an energy-efficient system, but, equally importantly, it enables local consumption of surpluses generated by renewable energy sources without excessively burdening energy networks. The investment market in this sector in Poland related to heat storage alone, as indicated by the above potential, is PLN 24.5 billion, and for heating plants with a capacity of 10–50 MW, it is PLN 7.5 billion.
The authors of the report conducted surveys among heating companies belonging to the Polish Heating Chamber of Commerce. 100% of the surveyed companies intend to base the development of the heating system on heat storage (54% are interested in investing in daily heat storage, and 46% in seasonal storage) and renewable energy sources. In terms of RES technologies, the greatest interest was enjoyed by biomass boilers (39%), P2H technology (24%) and solar collectors (22%). The surveyed companies focus on diversifying sources in the process of striving to achieve energy efficiency status, but the common denominator is always the heat storage.
In heating systems (cogeneration systems and recently Power2Heat) there are currently eight short-term installations that are used to accumulate heat over hours or days, among others to support inflexible fossil fuel technologies, primarily for cogeneration systems. These are: Toruń CHP (12,000 m3), Ostrołęka Power Plant (13,000 m3), Białystok CHP (13,000 m3), Czechnica CHP (13,000 m3), Kraków CHP (18,000 m3), Bielsko Biała CHP (20,000 m3), Poznań CHP (24,000 m3) and Siekierki CHP (30,000 m3).
As one of the most attractive solutions during the presentation of the report at the conference, the IEO president mentioned PTES, seasonal earth storage facilities with a capacity of at least 50,000 m3, up to 300,000 m3, the cost of which, with the increase in volume, "falls almost exponentially".