Nicosia, Cyprus. Cyprus could lose up to half of its conventional electricity generation capacity by 2030 unless natural gas infrastructure and the planned electricity interconnection with Greece are completed, officials and industry representatives told the House energy committee on Friday.
Nine ageing conventional units at Dhekelia and Vasiliko are due to be withdrawn under European environmental protocol, potentially creating a shortfall of about 750 megawatts.
Generation units to be withdrawn
Representatives of the energy regulatory authority said the structural challenge would begin after 2029, when six units at Dhekelia and three at Vasiliko must be permanently withdrawn.
They said electricity adequacy studies since 2015 had assumed that natural gas would arrive by 2022 and that an electricity interconnector would be operational by 2030.
Minister cites storage plans
Energy Minister Michael Damianos said outages last week were caused by high electricity demand combined with failures at conventional generating units.
He said the immediate situation should improve from next January with the installation of the transmission system operator’s first 120MW central storage facility.
Damianos said electricity supply would remain adequate until 2030 through storage and existing generators, but added that natural gas would be needed to ensure sufficiency after that point.
Vasiliko tender and EU exemption
The minister declined to provide a timetable for the arrival of natural gas, saying he did not want to repeat past mistakes. He confirmed that the terms of a new tender to complete the Vasiliko infrastructure had been approved and said he hoped work on the project would resume soon.
The regulatory authority said it had begun procedures to seek an exemption from EU regulations to allow Cyprus to establish an emergency capacity mechanism after the 2030 deadline.