Assessing Power System Flexibility for Variable Renewable Integration:A Flexibility Metric for Long-Term System Planning

Many countries around the world have instituted policies with the aim of increasing the amount of installed variable generation (VG), such as wind and solar. A consequence of increased penetrations of VG is that changes in their output must be met by the remainder of a system's resources so that the demand-generation balance is maintained. is paper proposes a highlevel methodology to assess power system exibility. In this context, exibility is the ability of a power system to deploy its resources to meet changes in the system demand and that of variable generation. e inclusion of such analysis at the long-term system planning stage will help to ensure that systems are optimally planned and operated with high levels of VG. Two case studies are presented which illustrate the exibility…