Problems of the Regional Energetics (Aug 2017)
Economic and Energy Security Impact of Interconnection Power Systems of Republic of Moldova and Western Europe
Abstract
It is known, by implementing asynchronous interconnections with ENTSO-E () the Republic of Moldova expects to reach the goals it has tended for more than 25 years: to have both a competitive electricity market and a decent energy security. In this paper, we try to evaluate whether this scenario can achieve those objectives. Based on a model created, which considers all possible power sources development scenarios and which permit to determine the tariffs applied to final consumers based on the costs the scenarios bear, it was shown that the implementation of asynchronous scenario, most likely will not be recovered economically, will not lead to creation of energy flows east-west and vice versa from which the country stakes to obtain benefits and, will not get expected balancing power from the west to cover the appropriate needs in the wind and solar energy sources promotion projects. Thus, asynchronous project becomes only one to achieve the objective of energy security. But for this it is expected to pay too much, about 0.5 billion USD. The article suggests that this goal may be achieved by a scenario that would require much smaller financing and that justifies an investment portfolio in which Moldova share would not exceed 20-30% of total investments asynchronous scenario needs for implementation. The originality of the results consists in: establishing the price difference of the competitive power markets that justifies economically the implementation of the asynchronous scenario of connecting the Moldovan power system to the Romanian one; The use of average tariffs applied to end-users - as a method to achieve the objective.
