Towards integrated and coordinated markets – a journey of challenges and opportunities

The topic of flexibility is on the rise. More flexibility is needed in the system and consequently more flexibility will enter the system, coming from a variety of sources, connected to different voltage levels, with different flexibility profiles. Novel services are designed by grid operators for which they would like to use flexibility, from long term planning up until real-time operations.  The emergence of all those novel services and applications across Europe results in a risk of fragmented markets with low liquidity and open to gaming issues.  Harmonization becomes crucial but how to deal with European harmonization without ignoring the individual nature of the end consumer? Moreover, the complexity for system operators to use flexibility for different purposes from different locations is sharply increasing. In this presentation, key insights from leading EU and Belgian projects are shared about the most impacting challenges and the possible solutions.