Electricity storage event at Academy of Athens

Members of the EASAC energy steering panel joined with the Academy of Athens to hold an event on electricity storage in the evening of 25^th April, following a working meeting of the steering panel on the same day. 

Between 40 and 50 participants, including representatives from the Greek government, the Greek energy industry, NGOs and academia were welcomed to the Academy by the President of the Academy of Athens and ex-Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, who very eloquently put the event into context from a Greek perspective.  The role and activities of EASAC were then presented by the Chairman of the EASAC energy steering panel, Prof Peter Lund. 

Two technical presentations were given by EASAC’s energy programme Director Dr William Gillett, who began by highlighting the main contents of the European Commission’s recent package of proposals on Clean Energy for all Europeans, and then presented the main findings of the EASAC working group on “Dedicated electricity storage in electricity grids”, which will be published in a new EASAC Report in May 2017.

The presentations were followed by a lively panel discussion, which was chaired by Dr Michael Ornetzeder from Austria, in which the panel members were Prof Alex Bradshaw (Germany), Prof Peter Lund (Finland), Prof George Kouzoukas (Greece) and Prof Raphael Moissis (Greece).  Several specific aspects of storage were identified as being of particular importance for Greece, notably the need to educate and train the future workforce on how to install and use storage systems, the added value of storage on islands, and the potential for using storage during the forthcoming transition of the Greek energy system to one with a much higher fraction of variable renewable generation.

The evening was brought to a close by Prof Loucas Christophorou, who thanked the President and members of the Academy of Athens for their support in organising the event, as well as EASAC and all the participants who had contributed their time and efforts to make it a success.