Claudiu Cretu, Elcen: “The future of heating in Bucharest is a hybrid one, with several technologies to be used”

“On the electricity market, now there is a certain effervescence related to all these potential new investments, especially in renewable energy. The question that is on everyone’s mind is: will they all be done, or which ones will be done, which ones will receive funding, which ones will be ready first? We see that sometimes the consumption is 5,000 – 6,000 megawatts, not to mention 4,000 somewhere around March-April. We are talking about tens of thousands of megawatts. Obviously, there are questions to which only time will give the answer, but the CETs in Bucharest must be done. Why? Any of the power plants in Romania, if it has a problem and stops, can be replaced from elsewhere.

Romania’s interconnection capacity has increased, but the thermal energy needed to heat the city of Bucharest, the capital of Romania, cannot be replaced. Bucharest is ‘too big to fail’. The gas network can’t support it, the electricity distribution network can’t support it either. So, this is how this system that has reached its limits in the last two-three years, actually the last three-four winters, especially 2020-2021, needs to be modernized. Global warming helped us. If there were winters in Bucharest like 10-15 years ago, with -20 degrees or -15 degrees for a few weeks, the situation would have been cruel. Mild winters have helped us, but they will not help us forever,” Claudiu Cretu, General Manager, Elcen said during Green Energy Conference organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“There are three CETs in Bucharest from the 60s-70s. At this moment, the projects are submitted to the Modernization Fund. We hope to receive grant funding, partially obviously. These CETs need to be made in the future electricity landscape. From my point of view, CETs will be very profitable. I am very happy when I see so much effervescence on renewables, because they must be balanced, and the CETs in Bucharest will produce especially when it is cloudy outside. This is how we balance the energy system. When it’s sunny outside we don’t need heat in radiators. We need heat in radiators exactly in the winter period, when the blanket of clouds leaves. Obviously, we are also talking about certain moments and throughout the year. These CETs will be new, flexible. Simply put, with CETs from the 60s it takes us about two days to turn them on. We start in October and stop them in April. Our projects add up to somewhere close to 500 megawatts. It is very important that a city has its own electricity production capacities and does not depend only on some wires where the energy comes from somewhere. Cities in Ukraine resisted because they had their own electricity production capacities.

Indeed, there are also problems. The rehabilitation of networks in Bucharest is a difficult, delayed process, but the important thing is that it is being done. It won’t last as long as it says in the chart, but it will last longer. I went through insolvency. Now there is no more insolvency case at ELCEN, and we are exactly at the moment of investments. We are currently working on the storage part. Renewable energy must be consumed, and we are also interested in having batteries. Unfortunately, a topic left behind for Bucharest is the biomass energy part. This topic is not discussed. Something could be done on the model of civilized cities in the West, where everywhere waste is an energy resource and there are several technologies that can transform this waste into energy. We still take all the waste to a landfill somewhere and, unfortunately, sometimes we still burn this waste.

The future of heating in Bucharest is a hybrid one. We are not talking about just one technology, but several technologies that will compete with each other and with an intelligent digital system to prioritize, obviously, the most cost-effective technology.”