The European Power System in 2030: Flexibility Challenges and Integration Benefits

As part of Europe’s renewable energy expansion plans, the PLEF countries will strive to draw 32 to 34 percent of their electricity from wind and solar by 2030. The weather dependency of these technologies impacts power systems, making increased system flexibility crucial.

Different weather patterns across Europe will decorrelate single power generation peaks, yielding geographical smoothing effects. Wind and solar output is generally much less volatile at an aggregated level and extremely high and low values disappear. For example, in France the maximum hourly ramp resulting from wind fluctuation in 2030 is 21 percent of installed wind capacity, while the Europe-wide maximum is only at 10 percent of installed capacity.

When no trading options exist, hours with high domestic wind and solar generation require that generation from renewables be stored or curtailed in part. With market integration, decorrelated production peaks across countries enable exports to regions where the load is not covered. By contrast, a hypothetical national autarchy case has storage or curtailment requirements that are ten times as high.

A more flexible power system is required for the transition to a low-carbon system. Challenging situations are manifold, comprising the ability to react over shorter and longer periods. To handle these challenges, the structure of the conventional power plant park and the way power plants operate will need to change. Renewables, conventional generation, grids, the demand side and storage technologies must all become more responsive to provide flexibility.