Can the Gas Sector Provide the Flexibility to the Power Sector for the Integration of Renewables?

The gas sector plays an important role for the integration of wind energy into the power sector: integrating large shares of variable renewables in the power sector requires increased flexibility of the residual system. An important part of this flexibility will most likely be provided by gas-fired power plants, which are suitable to supply the residual load. The gas demand from the power sector will thus be increasingly variable. In this paper, we evaluate whether this increased variability in gas demand can be provided by the gas sector for two exemplary countries in Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom (UK). First, we quantify the changing pattern in gas demand from the power sector with a detailed long term power sector model and identify the drivers of increased gas demand ramps. The new demand profile is added to the hourly demand profile of the non-power sectors (the buildings, transport and industry sector) extracted from a gas demand analysis tool. The evaluation of the total gas demand shows that the intraday ramps in gas demand are 30% higher in 2030 than today. But, the large inertia available in the gas sector suggests that the challenges arising in normal system operation are limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]