The coal plants continue being an important part of the transition to a low carbon economy

April 20, 2018

The coal plants continue being an important part of the transition to a low carbon economy, as they provide the needed stability of the grid, fed with an increasing share of electricity from renewable energy sources, stated the President of AES Bulgaria Olivier Marquette during the conference “Market Integration of RES and Transition to Clean Energy”.

The other way to guarantee the stability of the grid is undoubtedly Energy Storage – a technology in which AES is a world leader. Having an energy storage array backs up the system and allows the integration of more renewables, Marquette stated. He gave an example with an AES project in Kauai, in the Hawaii islands, where the company is developing a 28 MW Solar park, working together with a 100 MWh Energy Storage Array, providing stability to the grid and accumulating the energy to be used in the hours of peak consumption.

The forum, which was held in Sofia today, gathered reputable energy experts and policy-makers among which were the Minister of Energy Temenujka Petkova, Delyan Dobrev – Chairperson of the Energy Committee, Assoc. Prof. Ivan Ivanov – Chairperson of the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission, Mechthild Wörsdörfer – Director for Renewables, Research and Innovation and Energy Efficiency at DG Energy of the European Commission, Ricardo Gorini – Senior Programme Officer at the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and many others.