Stakeholders back Panama battery storage plan but highlight shortfalls

Panama public services regulator Asep’s proposal to incorporate battery energy storage systems (BESS) has received general support but also recommendations to improve the technology’s deployment.

To learn what stakeholders think of the proposed changes to the rules of the wholesale power market, BNamericas provides takeaways from comments submitted as part of the public consultation that began last month.

The following observations from industry players refer to the resolution related to the use of BESS for renewable energy plants: 

[Editor's Note: the “t” and “g” after BESS refer to the principal transmission system and generator, respectively.]

AES Panamá:

“The regulation establishes the administrative procedures to establish investigations and/or sanctions for non-compliance with the regulations that govern the Panamanian electricity market, which is why we believe that the proposal in section 14.10.1.16 exceeds the freedom of participation in the market.”

Alternegy:

“This incorporation of the transmission company [Etesa] as a producer participant may introduce a perverse incentive since the transmission company will be judge and party when defining when the BESSt are discharged.”

Edemet:

“A methodology must be developed where the criteria to be considered are established to determine the firm power that a BESSg would have, similar to what currently exists in the norm for other technologies.”

Enel Panamá:

“Under what conditions will the BESSg capacity calculation be carried out? Is the operator enabled to carry out arbitrage operations? It is important to understand under what payment scheme it will be structured.”

Etesa:

“It is not clear what happens with those producers that do not have supply or reserve contracts and become debtors and fail to comply with the payment process or do not deposit the guarantee amounts.”

Generadora del Atlántico:

“No load commitment is established for these systems. It is important to highlight that in times of energy shortage, these types of assets do not contribute any power to the system, since they are not capable of producing energy from a primary source, as happened at the end of last summer when the entire thermal park was called to dispatch and there was no surplus power at any time of the day.”

Sparkle Power:

“The proposal to modify the rules for the wholesale electricity market must be for the use of energy storage systems with batteries for all types of generation plants.”

The resolution is available here along with resolutions that refer to the procedure for defining the mechanisms to incorporate BESSs in the grid and final clients with critical loads. All the comments submitted to Asep are also available at the link.

Panama’s planned 500MW supply call envisions the use of BESS.