Ambitious targets for renewables in electricity generation require power grid reforms

24.02.2022News

Flexibility is required from many technologies and processes to operate a safe, secure, efficient and low-carbon European power system. These are some of the key messages of EU-Sysflex project – €26 million initiative with the goal of targeting key shortcomings of the European power grid. 

By 2030, the European Union has committed to deliver at least 50 percent of its electricity consumption from renewable sources of energy, much of this will come from wind and solar. As a result, power system operation is becoming more complex, creating uncertainties and technical challenges not previously seen in the European electricity system.

“The challenges are enormous, not just in terms of the scale of renewables that need to be built, but how we integrate those sources of energy onto the grid while maintaining reliability, stability, efficiency and resilience,” said John Lowry, director of the project.

EU-Sysflex aimed to provide clarity on some of the uncertainties and challenges. Scope of the project was unprecedented. The Project Consortium involved 34 various organizations including universities, consulting companies or power grid operators and distributors from 15 European countries.

Over the course of four years and four months, researchers and organizations executed a great number of tests, studies, and workshops which were progressively incorporated into European Power System Flexibility Roadmap to facilitate large-scale  integration of renewable energy across Europe.

“EU-Sysflex has done excellent work on the issue of renewables,” said vice-president of the European Commission for the interinstitutional relations Maroš Šefčovič.

“I believe that the power system flexibility roadmap will prove to be an extremely useful tool. Increased flexibility will be key to adapting the electricity system further towards variable and distributed renewable electricity generation while keeping costs down,” Šefčovič added.

The roadmap includes eight key messages and recommendations for policy-makers and other stakeholders.  These include identification of several technical scarcities as Europe transition to a power system with high share of renewables, need for enhanced technical services and new flexibility products, aggregation of decentralized resources, a customer-centric approach for efficient coordination between Transmission System Operators (TSO’s) and Distribution System Operators (DSO’s) as well as financial incentives.

Key messages were communicated to the public in the beginning of February on the final event which also included the panel discussion with relevant stakeholders. On the same day, Consortium including all the partners met for the last time.  Final technical event on project demonstrations was held on 14th of February 2022.

More information about the project as well as the final outputs and events recordings can be found on www.eu-sysflex.com.

 

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