By 2030, Slovenian natural gas electricity supplier GEN-I plans to build 1 GW of new solar power plants of all sizes, while also investing in energy storage devices to ensure stability of the grid. Overall, it has proposed to invest €1.06 billion in new technologies and digitalization to become the 'largest aggregator of flexibility at the transmission and distribution level'.
GEN-I has listed these proposals in its long-term Strategic Development Plan prepared after an analysis of the state and potential development of the Slovenian power system or EES. It believes these efforts will ensure Slovenia can be decarbonized before 2050.
President of Gen-I's Management Board Robert Galob admitted it to be an ambitious but feasible plan to enable the development and decarbonization efforts, while maintaining competitiveness and 'not increasing import dependence'.
By 2025, it has targeted to decarbonize all its operations. Having exited fossil fuel power generation space from January 1, 2021, GEN-I said it is supplying its customers with a non-fossil fuel generated electricity giving option to choose the electricity generation source. It has now more than 2,100 solar power plants in the country for individual self-consumption.
Its strategic plans include increasing electricity sales on international wholesale markets to 1,000 TWh by 2030, representing close to 100 times the electricity consumption of the entire country. GEN-I also aims to acquire smaller suppliers as it targets to increase its customer strength to 1.2 million by 2030.
In May 2021, another Slovenian electricity utility HSE secured a building permit for what it called as the country's largest solar power plant with 3.04 MW capacity (see Slovenia: 'Largest' Solar Plant Will Have 3 MW Capacity).
According to the EU Market Outlook For Solar Power 2020-2024 of SolarPower Europe (SPE), Slovenia targets to achieve 1.65 GW of solar PV capacity by 2030 under its National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP), where its cumulative installed capacity till 2020 reached 385 MW.
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