Enlit Europe 2023- All eyes on flexibility

Year after year, Enlit Europe brings together stakeholders and experts from the entire energy sector, from market players and service providers to system operators and public entities. It’s a good occasion to take the pulse of the industry and this time it very clearly went “flex – flex – flex”. Not that flexibility per se is new. But its sources – in and beyond the electricity sector – and the overwhelming recognition that we need much more of it are.

Why does it matter?

Because flexibility is essential to achieve the effective decarbonization of the energy sector. It also means that the industry is moving “from talking to walking”:

• Yesterday’s startups providing software for flexibility service providers, automating processes or aggregating small-scale resources are turning into full-fledged industry players.
• System operators recognise the urgent need for flexibility to absorb increasing fluctuations in RES supply as the second pillar next to grid investments.
• Multiple parties argue for improved locational signals for market participants to invest in flexibility where it is (or will be) needed the most or adjust output when the system is under stress.
• Solutions for DSOs are slowly but surely emerging. Be it through capacity contracts, local flexibility markets or advanced Distributed Energy Resource Management Solutions (DERMS). The number of options, as well as the complexity, is growing while some basic challenges such as grid observability, operational management and often cooperation among system operators are still rudimentary.
• Electricity market reform was also widely discussed and in particular, one of its most prominent elements: contracts for differences (CfDs). Examples are locational signals to enable grid-compatible RES expansion or ways to deal with a likely scenario of a large chunk of all assets being on CfDs.

Luckily, we’re also moving away from silo thinking and into the world of integrated cross-sector solutions. In this way, we observe the boom of storage and e-mobility and associated solutions, the emergence of the hydrogen sector as well as an increasing number of cases of deeper synergies between the electricity and heat sectors.