Storage as a flexibility option in power systems with high shares of variable renewable energy sources: a POLES-based analysis

- New coupling of a power system optimisation tool with a long-term energy model.
- New investment mechanism for storage based on multiple economic values.
- Most flexibility options are included: within-day storage, demand response and grid.
- Storage benefits from high carbon values and from surplus solar energy.
- Storage mainly needed to integrate wind and solar in the second half of the century.

In this paper, we demonstrate the role of electricity storage for the integration of high shares of variable renewable energy sources (VRES) in the long-term evolution of the power system. For this, a new electricity module is developed in POLES (Prospective Outlook on Long-term Energy Systems). It now takes into account the impacts of VRES on the European power system. The power system operation relies on EUCAD (European Unit Commitment and Dispatch), which includes daily storage and other inter-temporal constraints. The innovative aspect of our work is the direct coupling between POLES and EUCAD, thus combining a long-term simulation horizon and a short-term approach for the power system operation. The storage technologies represented are pumped-hydro storage, lithium-ion batteries, adiabatic compressed air energy storage (a-CAES) and electric vehicles (charging optimisation and vehicle-to-grid). Demand response and European grid interconnections are also represented in order to include, to some extent, these flexibility options.