BeFlexible in Enlit’s podcast: Moving flexibility to real world implementation
As BeFlexible reaches the end of its journey, this episode of Enlit’s podcast explores one of the key questions for Europe’s energy transition: how can flexibility move from successful demonstrations to real-world implementation at scale?
Energy flexibility has become an essential part of Europe’s transition towards a more renewable, electrified and decentralised energy system. Over the past years, European research and innovation projects have demonstrated its technical potential and tested new services, market models and digital solutions. The challenge now is ensuring that these solutions can move beyond pilots and become part of the everyday operation of Europe’s electricity system.
This is the focus of a new episode of the EU Energy Projects Podcast by Enlit, featuring José Pablo Chaves Ávila, Deputy Director for Research Development at the Institute for Research in Technology (IIT) of Comillas Pontifical University and BeFlexible partner, alongside Katerina Drivakou from the ENFLATE project.
Both projects have collaborated throughout the years and bring complementary perspectives to the discussion: BeFlexible addresses the regulatory strategies and market frameworks needed to enable flexibility procurement, while ENFLATE focuses particularly on engaging end users in flexibility provision.
You can listen to the full episode here:
Regulation: the engine behind flexibility
One of the main messages highlighted by José Pablo Chaves during the conversation is that technological innovation alone will not be enough to deploy flexibility at scale.
Regulation determines the incentives under which electricity system operators make their investment and operational decisions. If regulatory frameworks continue to favour traditional grid reinforcement over the procurement of flexibility services, flexibility will struggle to become a mainstream tool for system operators.
As José Pablo explains in the podcast:
“Europe is moving in the right direction, but significant work remains. The principles introduced at European level still need to be translated consistently into national regulatory frameworks and practical mechanisms that allow flexibility markets to develop”.
This regulatory dimension has been a key part of BeFlexible throughout its four years of work. Alongside the deployment and validation of flexibility solutions across several European countries, the project has investigated the market, regulatory and business conditions needed to facilitate their wider adoption.
Building flexibility markets that work in practice
Moving towards large-scale flexibility also means preparing electricity markets and digital infrastructures for the participation of a growing number of distributed resources and smaller actors. During the podcast, the discussion addresses some of the key requirements identified through BeFlexible’s work, including interoperability, cybersecurity and data governance. These elements become increasingly important as flexibility markets connect system operators, aggregators, consumers, prosumers and other service providers through digital platforms.
BeFlexible has explored these challenges through its demonstration activities and digital solutions, providing practical evidence of how flexibility services can operate under different technical, market and regulatory conditions.
From European projects to European implementation
After four years of research, development and demonstrations, BeFlexible has shown that flexibility can provide tangible value for electricity networks and consumers. The next step is ensuring that the knowledge, tools and lessons generated by projects such as BeFlexible can be replicated and incorporated into the wider European energy system.
Listen to the full conversation and discover how EU projects are helping turn energy flexibility into a real-world solution for Europe’s energy transition.
