Belgian zinc smelter makes 100 megawatt-hour battery and will store energy with excess – IT Pro – News

You give the impression that expensive consumers don’t pay because they only pay a few cents per kWh, which is not true. A large consumer pays mainly on energy, but not so much on consumption. The right to purchase of 32 MW plus the obligation to purchase is what a large consumer pays.

Until now, only the small consumer (mainly the consumer) was charged for depreciation, which is no longer possible.

After all, the challenge has always been to keep Grid balanced, and how much I have to produce versus how much drop there is. If a large consumer indicates that he needs 32 megawatts, but suddenly isn’t running low, you have 32 megawatts on your network that you can’t get rid of. But also vice versa, if you suddenly decide to buy 64 MW, then suddenly you are short of 32 MW. Thus, a large consumer is financially severely punished for this, if he suddenly begins to demand more or less energy.

What you see in the production companies is that due to a sudden standstill (power outage) or when production has to start (power surge), you have to charge a huge amount on your energy bill. Presumably, that battery they put here is just for that purpose, to prevent them from causing surges in both directions.

In the past, this consumption by consumers was predictable and small and it was not technically possible to start billing for energy. However, technology does not stand still, and with the advent of electric vehicles, solar panels and heat pumps, this predictability is disappearing. This means that if prices remain stable, you will pay much less for consumption, but will charge if the power required fluctuates wildly. So the consumer will approach how things work with the big consumers.

Vacation homes will then pay more than the minimum, consume very little but are asking for 10 months 0 and then all of a sudden they are asking for 2 months. This also makes sense because grid fixed costs equate to a non-holiday home when you can only sell production capacity for two months which you can’t lose for the other 10 months. The same story applies to solar panels hanging directly from the grid, and once billed correctly, many current owners will be angry that their changing demand for power will raise their bill.

However, if we stick to the old system, where consumers demand more energy and variable, those costs are there anyway. In the old system, these costs were simply distributed to everyone, but do we want that? I certainly don’t, because then you don’t have the financial motivation to improve it, like this company, to invest in a battery, for example.