Making sensible use of renewable energies
In recent years the item control energy has become more and more important. Due to the rise of supplied and fed-in current out of renewable energies, the necessity of the so-called load-balancing has increased massively. This is caused mainly by the uncontrollable energy input of this energy into the public grid. Over the course of a day this incurs a discrepancy between current demand and supply.
To ensure the grid stability and to avoid a collapse, the grid operators are eager to maintain the grid frequency around 50 Hz.
Since the surplus energy in the grid cannot simply be "consumed" and the storage of electrical energy is mostly not displayable at a large scale, installations for the use of control energy are intended to change the energy form.
In detail this means that heat is produced out of the surplus electrical energy which is in excess quantities in the grid. This heat can be then used for different processes. For instance the produced steam can be fed into local and remote heating networks. As positive side effect operators of supply systems for control energy are financially reimbursed by network providers in the field of minute- or second-reserve.
Consequently, plants generating control energy make an indispensable contribution to securing the power supply in the entire grid.