Powering Europe - European Wind Energy Association

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Flexible balancing solutions (generation capabilities,
load management, energy storage) help facilitate the
integration of wind power into power systems. Even
though power system balancing is not new, wind power
does provide new challenges at high penetration levels,
because its variability characteristics require power
systems to become more flexible. The type of flexibility
required is the ability to adequately respond to
fast and significant system load variations.
Put another way, in a system that is more flexible, the
effort needed to reach a certain wind energy penetration
level will be lower than in a less flexible system.
In a system that spans a larger geographical area, a
larger amount of flexible sources are generally available.
The differences in power system sizes, dispatching
principles and system flexibility explain why integration
costs vary in different countries. For example a
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country like Denmark, where wind power meets more
than 100% of power demand for several hours of the
year, has a lot of flexibility because it is well interconnected,
especially with the Nordic “hydro countries”,
which enables a high wind energy penetration level
at low additional costs. Another example of a flexible
power system that enables easy and low-cost wind
power integration is Portugal, due to the high amount
of fast responding reversible hydro power plants in the
system.
Planning for integrating substantial amounts of wind
power should consider what provisions (flexible sources)
are needed to provide for additional flexibility in the
system compared to a situation without wind power. In
the assessment of the required additional flexibility, a
distinction has to be made between the different market
time-scales (hour/day ahead). The main sources
Powering Europe: wind energy and the electricity grid
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