Metlen is banking on its new 330 MW mega-battery in Larissa to reduce energy costs at Aluminium of Greece. It brought the battery online yesterday, as natural gas prices neared €90.
In practice, this means that at a time when energy prices are increasingly elevated, part of the Asprа Spitia complex’s annual consumption of 2.8 terawatt-hours — equivalent to 5% of national demand — will be supplied by the Thessaly project. The largest standalone battery in Greece, costing €170 million, will store surplus green energy generated during the day. It is one of the largest in south-eastern Europe, with a capacity of 790 MWh.
Although it will make a significant contribution, the battery’s two-hour duration means it is clearly not enough on its own to meet the needs of the plant, by far Greece’s largest energy consumer.
A two-phase plan
That is why Metlen’s plan to supply Aluminium of Greece will unfold in two phases.
In about a year, the needs of Greece’s most energy-intensive industry will be met by a second investment of similar scale that the Greek group is planning at Asprа Spitia, comprising a solar park and a battery with a similar capacity of about 300 MW.
Unlike the large Metlen (49%)–Karatzis (51%) unit that came online yesterday, this second investment is not subject to the anti-concentration limit. In other words, it is not covered by the current cap on batteries per investor in Greece, which prevents any one investor from owning more than 500 MW.
It follows a completely different model: behind-the-meter projects, in which nearby renewable energy sources supply electricity directly to the battery, without the energy being transported through the transmission system and thus adding to the burden on local grids.
Mytilineos’s message
“If the 500 MW limit did not exist, Metlen could develop projects with a capacity of 2 GW,” Evangelos Mytilineos said yesterday, referring to the national framework, which is intended to curb oligopolistic conditions by barring any business group from owning a battery fleet larger than half a gigawatt.
It is worth noting that with the battery it brought online yesterday — for which it also handles energy management — and the other capacity it owns or has applied for through tenders (100 MW in the first tenders, with subsidies, and 250 MW in the tender without subsidies), Metlen has already reached the 500 MW limit.
Market participants believe the only way to meet the government Roadmap’s target of 5–7 GW of batteries by 2029–30 is to abolish the cap, allowing players with the financial means to invest in batteries to do so.
In practice, the inauguration of the large Metlen–Karatzis battery in Larissa has revived debate about the need to accelerate such investments as the only way to make use of green energy that is currently being wasted, and thereby significantly reduce wholesale prices and, in turn, retail prices.
Mitsotakis: 4 GW target by 2028
In this context, the government is facing pressure to lift the cap, on the grounds that the targets above will otherwise be difficult to achieve.
“By 2028, we want to have 3–4 GW of projects operating or under development at storage facilities. And, of course, these could be either batteries or pumped-storage projects,” the prime minister said at yesterday’s event.
For his part, Ev. Mytilineos stressed the need for energy, industrial and development policy to work much more closely together.
“We cannot plan the energy system without thinking about how industry will operate. We cannot talk about reindustrialisation without having answered the question of energy costs,” he said, citing the Larissa investment as an example of this approach.
That is the model: investment in large-scale batteries integrated into a system with growing numbers of renewable energy sources, grids and interconnections, helping to create a more flexible and resilient energy system.
According to Mr Mytilineos, expanding such investments gives the country the opportunity to make use of its energy advantage by combining clean energy with storage and grids. This can provide a foundation for industry and the development of new productive activities.
“Metlen will continue to invest in this direction, in Greece and internationally,” he assured.