The FlexPlan Horizon2020 project aimed at establishing a new grid planning methodology which considers the opportunity to introduce new storage and flexibility resources in electricity transmission and distribution grids as an alternative to building new grid elements, in accordance with the intentions of the European Commission regulatory package "Clean Energy for all Europeans". FlexPlan creates a new innovative grid planning tool which is intended to go beyond the state of the art of planning methodologies by including the following innovative features: assessment of best planning strategy by analysing in one shot a high number of candidate expansion options provided by a pre-processor tool, simultaneous mid- and long-term planning assessment over three grid years (2030-2040-2050), incorporation of full range of cost benefit analysis criteria into the target function, integrated transmission distribution planning, embedded environmental analysis (air quality, carbon footprint, landscape constraints), probabilistic contingency methodologies in replacement of the traditional N-1 criterion, application of numerical decomposition techniques to reduce calculation efforts and analysis of variability of yearly RES and load time series through a Monte Carlo process. Six regional cases covering nearly the whole European continent are developed in order to cast a view on grid planning in Europe till 2050. The final step in FlexPlan was formulating guidelines for regulators and planning offices of system operators, by indicating to what extent system flexibility can contribute to reduce overall system costs (operational and investment) yet maintaining current system security levels and which regulatory provisions could foster such process. This paper focuses on the regulatory issues, which were uncovered during the initiation phase and of the project and refined in throughout six regional cases. In order to substantiate this, the paper explains in brief the developed and applied FlexPlan methodology and its testing in six regional cases.
Keywords: Demand Response and Energy Storage; Flexible Resources; Grid Expansion Planning Tool.
The FlexPlan Horizon 2020 project developed a novel methodology for transmission and distribution grid expansion planning, which considers use flexible resources e.g., energy storage and demand response, as an alternative to the conventional approach i.e., building new grid elements. The methodology was implemented in a dedicated software tool and extensively tested in six regional cases, covering a major part of Europe. Throughout the whole project much attention was paid to the existing and forthcoming regulatory aspects to ensure that the developed methodology complies with them. Furthermore, based on the outcomes and lessons learned throughout the regional cases, the study has suggested several proposals i.e., regulatory guidelines for improvement of the existing regulatory framework in order to remove the barriers and pave the road for more active use of flexible resources in the grid expansion planning, and thereby to achieve more efficient operation of the distribution and transmission networks with high share of renewable generation.
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