The Polish Ministry of Energy and Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne (PSE) have prepared draft legislative initiatives that will increase the resilience of the National Power System to disruptions and failures.
In September, they will be included in the list of works of the Council of Ministers. The changes include, among others, the Energy Law, the Cybersecurity Law, and the Public Procurement Law.
The initiative is a response to events in the Iberian Peninsula, where one of the largest blackouts in Europe occurred on April 28. This failure demonstrated the vulnerability of modern society to disruptions in the electricity supply.
A report by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) on the causes and course of the disruption will be published in October. However, the available data has allowed conclusions to be drawn, on the basis of which PSE and the Ministry of Energy are preparing proposals for regulatory changes to increase the resilience of the system as part of the so-called anti-blackout package.
“The anti-blackout package is a set of legal changes that will allow us to better protect the power system against failures and cyberattacks. It is our duty to provide Polish families with a sense of security and certainty that energy will flow to households regardless of unforeseen events. With the solutions we are proposing, we want to minimize the risk of events in Poland that have occurred in Spain or Portugal ,” emphasized Minister of Energy Miłosz Motyka.
– We are working on a comprehensive package of laws that will help build long-term energy security for the country. Our priority is to provide citizens and the economy with reliable energy supplies that are resistant to all crises and disruptions. Thanks to these measures, we are strengthening the foundations of our energy sovereignty and paving the way for further sustainable development – said Secretary of State at the Ministry of Energy, Government Plenipotentiary for Strategic Energy Infrastructure Wojciech Wrochna.
– The blackout in Spain and Portugal showed that even a strong system is vulnerable to disruptions, and that restoring it to normal operation can take more than a dozen hours. As an operator, we have presented recommendations for measures that will increase our resilience. This is essential for the security of the economy and society – said PSE President Grzegorz Onichimowski.
The package consists of six areas:
System management: strengthening incentives for market participants to better align electricity production with the current needs of the system, standardizing obligations to report work plans for installations connected to the grid, increasing the number of entities that will be required to participate in the balancing market (by lowering the threshold for the size of obligated installations).
Local content: introducing regulations on the use of a specified share of locally manufactured ICT equipment and solutions in public procurement in the field of electricity.
Cybersecurity: introduction of certification requirements for devices connected to the grid, obligation to subject large installations and the entities managing them to constant cybersecurity supervision, minimization of the vulnerability of devices connected to the National Power System to cyberattacks (security by design).
Operator independence: strengthening the supervision of the government representative for strategic energy infrastructure over the development of the national power grid and operational processes.
Grid connections: shaping the connection process in such a way as to support the development of technologies consistent with the state’s energy policy and the principle of effective management of public funds.
Prosumers: streamlining the rules for connecting prosumers to the grid, ensuring that operators have full knowledge of the operation of prosumer installations and the possibilities for managing them.
Source: PSE
