🔋 Everyone is talking about the new Flexibility Needs Assessment (FNA), but what should an FNA actually look like?
Josipa Landeka and I argue that FNAs should be full-scale modeling exercises—not just a residual load curve analysis—to meet the requirements set out by the Electricity Market Directive (EMD). Why? Because they need to inform Member States about the level of flexibility required to balance their energy systems.
📖 Full report here: https://lnkd.in/eicQsdvJ
To clarify what FNAs in Europe should achieve, we reviewed a range of flexibility assessments from the literature. Our findings outline how an FNA aligned with the EMD should be structured.
Key takeaways:
1️⃣ Decarbonization: Member States need to define how much renewable integration they aim for—or how much curtailment they are willing to accept. In other words, FNAs can only determine how much flexibility is required if a clear target is set.
2️⃣ Flexibility vs. Adequacy: The need for flexibility to maintain supply security should focus on identifying shortfalls in energy and reserves related to the inflexibility of power plants. This contrasts with adequacy assessments (ERAA), which address overall capacity. While these security of supply issues related to inflexibility might seem secondary today, they will become relevant as we phase out conventional fossil-fuel generation on a large scale.
3️⃣ To assess inflexibility, we need to model it: All power plant limitations—such as minimum stable load, minimum downtime, and ramping constraints—must be included in the analysis. Otherwise, we will miss a big part of the picture. This is a new challenge, as, to our knowledge, no European-wide assessment currently uses full-scale unit commitment modeling.
A big thanks to the colleagues at ACER for the insightful discussions: Daniel Ihasz-Toth, Rafael Muruais Garcia, Arthur Lynch, Christos Kolokathis and Francois Beaude.
And of course a shout out to the team: Silvia L. Vitiello, Rade Cadjenovic, David Pozo Camara, Josipa Landeka, Alexis Meletiou PhD
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1moThanks for sharing