Smart Grids and Turkey: An Overview of the Current Power System and Smart Grid Development

Sammanfattning: Successful integration of the smart grids is crucial for ensuring the efficiency, resiliency, and sustainability of future power systems. With a 46.53% increase in total primary energy supply between 2008 and 2018 (IEA, 2020a), Turkey has the fastest-growing energy market within OECD countries (Erdin and Ozkaya, 2019).Though, Turkey’s current electrical grid faces many challenges; such as high loss rates from the transmission and distribution lines (Damar, 2016; Düzgün, 2018; IBRD/The World Bank, 2016; TEİAŞ, 2019), frequent power outages (Guner and Ozdemir, 2011; Öztürk, 2017; Yanılmaz, 2016) and several incidents of large-scale blackouts (OECD/IEA, 2016; Project Group Turkey, 2015). Smart grid technologies can address Turkey’s power system’s challenges with a holistic approach, as the smart grid does not have a strict definition yet but has distinctive characteristics. This paper provides an overview of Turkey’s current electric power system’s challenges while analyzing Turkey’s progress up to the present day towards the smart grid transition. Also, in order to summarize fundamental smart grid technologies globally, a smart grid framework was designed. Founded upon the framework; Turkey’s previous actions for its power system development were assessed from the smart grid perspective, and further steps were proposed to accomplish a successful smart grid transition. Country-specific remarks regarding the electrical grid were highlighted, such as the risk of terrorism, high seismic activity in the region, and emerging nuclear power in the country. As a result, it is concluded that Turkey has initiated the process towards the smart grid transition not only to achieve a “smart grid ideal” but mainly to meet its growing energy demands. Furthermore, it is also concluded that if the smart grid technologies’ scope could be extended throughout the country, Turkey would overcome the challenges with its power system in short to medium-term.