Industrial fexibility options and their applications in a future energy system

The ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 and the resulting efforts to reduce emissions require a fundamental shift towards a system of Renewable Energy Sources. The increasing use of wind and solar power creates fluctuations in the electricity supply. However, in electricity systems, it is crucial to balance electricity supply and consumption at any point in time. Therefore, future electricity systems require flexibility on the demand side, to dynamically adjust electricity consumption to the availability of electricity from Renewable Energy Sources, as well as on the supply side, to adjust electricity output. We structure this demand for flexibility into different flexibility applications (e.g., ancillary services or intra-day market). In turn, various flexibility options (e.g., industrial Demand-Side Management or battery storages) can meet these flexibility applications. The objective of this Whitepaper is to answer the question which flexibility options qualify to meet the requirements of specific flexibility applications to provide insights for the deployment of flexibility options in the German electricity system. This Whitepaper provides a comprehensive analysis of overall flexibility options based on literature. The focus of the Whitepaper lies on the flexibility option industrial Demand-Side Management and the under Flying Energy Flexibility Measures like, e.g., the adaption of production start. The evaluation of technical and regulatory aspects of flexibility options based on empirical data of participating companies within the Kopernikusproject SynErgie and the matching of flexibility options and their possible applications yields the following results: In the overall view, industrial Demand-Side Management can contribute to every flexibility application. As a part of industrial Demand-Side Management, there are Energy Flexibility Measures that only meet the requirements of specific flexibility applications, such as for energy-only markets or ancillary services (in the positive direction), but also single Energy Flexibility Measures that can be used for every flexibility application. Therefore, industrial Demand-Side Management must reach a competitive price level to prevail against competing flexibility options.