Accentuating the renewable energy exploitation: Evaluation of flexibility options

A global energy transition is currently happening mainly through the shift from conventional to renewable electricity resources in power energy systems. On this transition, the flexibility of the power grid complies a fundamental role to permit the full integration of renewables. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to develop a methodology that permits evaluating the current technological flexibility options available in power grids to exploit the integration of renewables fully. A Mixed Integer Linear Programming model is developed. The model incorporates pumped energy and battery storage systems, demand response, virtual power plant, and transmission-distribution energy transactions. The work is focused on the operation planning considering daily, weekly and seasonal factors regarding renewables and load patterns. The general results show, that all the flexibility options have the capacity to integrate, in a mayor extent, the renewable energy into the power grid. For example, from a base integration of 40.6% of renewable energy, all the flexi-options added an extra 27.1% of energy from RES. Suggesting, that the best option to integrate renewables is the incorporation of a diverse set of flexibility options. Interestingly, options like demand response and virtual power plant, presented the best renewables integration figures (17.9% and 6.9%) compared to options like energy storages (6.05% average). Therefore, it is strongly recommendable to analyze particularly options which, with plausible modifications and minor investment requirements, can offer a suitable flexibility capacity to the existent power grid. Finally, distribution-distribution or transmission-distribution energy transactions also have a great potential to diminish the renewable curtailment. For example, they permitted integrating an extra 13.9% and 93.53% respectively, for the full flexi-option.