Efficient Operationalization of Flexibility Procurement: Market Design Analysis and Process Definition

Flexibility provision for ancillary services and electricity markets has been widely seen as crucial for the future of highly interconnected energy systems with high shares of renewables. Yet, little research has so far addressed (1) how its procurement could be best operationalized and (2) how limited flexible resources can be used more efficiently given the growing system needs. This paper focuses on flexibility services for transmission operators, specifically balancing and redispatch, as well as the intraday market within the context of the European electricity market. To analyze possible services and/or market combinations, we compare three modes of flexibility procurement: (a) sequential, (b) parallel and (c) combined. We evaluate the different modes of procurement options based on eight criteria. We further investigate how the procurement of flexibility, including small-scale technical units, could be organized via a flexibility platform given the most promising implementation setup, and detail the process for “flexibility service provider <> flexibility platform <> market interaction”, taking the multi-use-case logic into account.