Enabling flexibility in low-carbon electricity systems

Our electricity system needs to continuously match supply to demand. To achieve real-time demand and supply balance, electricity must be transported from where it is generated to where it is needed. With increasing levels of weather-dependent electricity generation and our changing patterns of consumption it is becoming very challenging and expensive to balance the grid.

Flexibility is the ability of the electricity system to adjust supply and demand in reaction to an external signal (such as price) to provide a service to the power system. Flexibility within the electricity system allows us to keep the flow of energy through the network within safe limits and provide better value to the consumer for the given infrastructure.

While it is recognised that we need more flexibility in our power system, views vary widely on how to achieve this, particularly to improve grid integration and make maximum use of solar and wind potential. The PhD position will study the key enablers of flexibility and will build mathematical models of demand-side flexibility, storage and sector coupling to understand and quantify the value flexibility can provide to a power system.

The research conducted within this PhD project will aim to answer the following three questions:
1. How much value can flexibility bring to the GB electricity system in the context of net-zero?
2. How will gas and electricity system interact with each other to provide increased flexibility across the whole energy system?
3. What will be the role of flexibility in decarbonising heat and transport sector?