At Sibelga, flexibility is more than just a buzz word. Along with sizing and dynamic management, it forms part of a broader strategy to maintain the balance of the electricity grid.
With the energy transition, new uses of the grid are emerging, such as electric vehicle recharging, decentralised energy production and the increasing use of heat pumps.
These developments generate peaks in production and consumption, creating new challenges for ensuring the stability of the electricity grid.
These developments cannot solely be addressed by shoring up the grid. Technological innovation and pricing strategies also come into play.
In this context flexibility is set to become increasingly important in the coming years.
What exactly is flexibility?
Flexibility is a customer's ability to adjust their electricity consumption or generation to prevent grid overload.
In practical terms, this means, for example, encouraging customers to recharge their electric cars on sunday afternoons when solar production is high and the grid is not in high demand, rather than at 6pm, when everyone has just got home from work and demand is at its highest.
This adjustment can occur in two ways:
- Either in response to pricing incentives. This is what is known as implicit flexibility.
- Or in response to signals sent by the grid. This is explicit flexibility.
Sibelga: a key player in flexibility
Sibelga, as a market facilitator, has a key role to play in developing flexibility:
- Ensuring accurate and transparent data metering.
- Maintaining an access register serving as a link between the various market players.
- Providing the market with the signals it needs to function, such as short-term forecasts or real-time data.
Why flexibility?
Flexibility offers many advantages to the residents of Brussels, both economically and environmentally.
By optimising the use of existing resources, it allows certain investments to be avoided or planned more flexibly. This in turn helps to reduce distribution costs for consumers.
Flexibility also has a key role to play in maintaining grid stability. By adjusting demand according to the available supply, it becomes possible to avoid imbalances (during peaks in consumption or injection) that could lead to blackouts or outages.
Flexibility also enables individuals and businesses to harness untapped potential (example), while helping to manage energy in a more responsible and sustainable manner.
Where do we stand?
Towards a 360° view
Key elements driving this transformation are the smart grid and the smart meter, which play a central role in enabling energy flows to be tracked and data to be escalated in real time. For several years now, we have been investing in grid supervision and control tools to make progress in this area.
Pricing strategies
At the same time, implicit flexibility is gaining ground thanks to the introduction of pricing incentives. Systems such as the dual hourly rate or more recently the dynamic rate already encourage consumers to shift their consumption to times when the rates are lower.
In the same vein, Sibelga and the regulator Brugel are working on a new pricing structure to further alleviate pressure on the electricity grid. Instead of the current dual-rate tariff, a 3-period rate is expected to be introduced in the next few years.
These incentive mechanisms are essential to encourage responsible use of the electricity grid.
Interactions between global and local actions.
Adjusting consumption in real time
Explicit flexibility, on the other hand, is continuing to make fast headway. This concept enables consumers to play an active part in balancing the electricity grid and to benefit financially. Rather than the system adapting to demand, it is demand that adapts to the capacities of the system, particularly renewable energy generation, which is intermittent (solar, wind).
Explicit flexibility today mainly concerns Medium and High Voltage customers. Industrial or tertiary sites can thus make their flexibility potential available via aggregators such as Flexcity or Centrica.
At the same time, the flexibility market for Low Voltage is booming.However, as this flexibility is spread across many small players, it is necessary to be able to pool these resources on a large scale in order to achieve the volumes required to participate in the electricity market.
What are our projects?
Network load forecasting
To enable proactive and reactive management of energy resources, the ability to forecast grid load is essential. That's why we're working on data analysis to establish short-term grid status forecasts (D+1 to D+7).
New dynamic signals
With explicit flexibility activated, there is a risk that many users will change their electricity consumption or production at the same time, which could overload the local grid. To avoid this, dynamic signal systems, or "traffic lights", will gradually replace the static grid studies originally designed to manage High Voltage. These signals will indicate to market players whether they can activate their flexibility without creating a local problem.
For this purpose, a shared tool will be developed by the distribution grid operators to harmonise this new approach. At the same time, signals could be sent directly to customers when certain risks arise, such as an imminent overload or an expected grid shortage.
Explicit flexibility for Low Voltage
In the long term, there is considerable potential to enable Low Voltage customers to offer explicit flexibility. Residential customers or small businesses would then have the opportunity to offer flexibility on the electricity grid. This market is still in the making, but is developing rapidly and promisingly.
When your home becomes a grid player
Let's say you have an electric water heater, an electric car and an energy management system driven by a "flexibility aggregator", a specialist company that manages market participation for you.
Thanks to this system, your appliances automatically adjust their consumption. In the middle of the afternoon, the system uses abundant solar and wind-generated electricity to charge your water heater. In the evening, during peak demand, it switches off these appliances to relieve pressure on the grid.
In exchange for this transparent flexibility, which has no impact on your comfort, you are rewarded (for example, via a lower rate or another benefit). This is the essence of explicit flexibility: you benefit from advantages to help balance the grid, and become an active participant in the energy transition.
Explicit flexibility could be provided by low-voltage customers.
Flexible connections
At the same time, other explicit flexibility solutions could be envisaged, such as flexible connections, though these are not yet available in Brussels. These systems make it possible to better adapt electrical infrastructure to demand fluctuations and provide an effective alternative for optimising energy resource use.
What are the challenges of flexibility?
Grid flexibility is a key issue in the current energy transition. However, it comes with a number of major challenges.
Impact on the market
One of the main risks associated with this increased flexibility is market congestion or distortion. When grids are overloaded by high demand or variable renewable energy production, this can lead to bottlenecks that disrupt the balance between supply and demand.
Impact on suppliers
There is a need for fair and equitable rules for the participation of small consumers, as the flexibility they provide can potentially impact the revenues of energy suppliers. Synergrid, the federation of Belgian grid operators, is working on this issue.
Predicting behaviour
Another challenge lies in the difficulty of accurately quantifying changes in the behaviour of energy consumers and producers. Economic and regulatory incentives must be carefully calibrated to encourage the desired behaviour without triggering unintended side effects.
Fragmentation of players
Historically, flexibility markets require high power thresholds (e.g. 1 MW for Elia's balancing market). This makes individual participation impossible and aggregation via Flexibility Service Providers (FSPs) essential.
A widespread rollout of smart meters in households is also a prerequisite for enabling household participation in the explicit flexibility market.
A changing market
In short, while power grid flexibility offers considerable opportunities to integrate more renewable energy and improve energy efficiency, it also requires rigorous management to address its inherent challenges.
Today, flexibility mainly concerns large high- and medium-voltage customers, but the residential market is changing rapidly. Pooling household flexibility is a promising avenue.
A future to define
It is still too early to determine which solutions will need to be implemented and when. The challenge over the next few years will be to analyse all these solutions and test those that emerge as the most relevant in order to address as many concerns as possible and define an appropriate and fair regulatory framework.