The FlexMyHeat project aims at understanding the role that heat pumps and decentralized storage solutions will play in 2030 and 2050 as a source of flexibility for the national electricity system.
By 2050 heat pumps will provide between 35% and 95% of the Belgian demand for heat. This might turn to +50% of the Belgian peak load.
This project aims at understanding how this extra burden on the electricity system can be turned into an opportunity.
Properly controlling heat pumps, in combination with local storage solutions, will result in several advantages:
- Significant reduction of peak loads
- Increase of self-sufficiency of Belgium
- The power grid will become more resilient
Envisioned outcomes
- A quantitative analysis of the effects of the adoption of heat pumps and decentralized electrical/thermal storage, including control/coordination strategies at (a combination of) various timescales, ranging from day-ahead markets to ancillary services (aFRR, FCR), and the new consumer-centric market design
- A qualitative assessment of the actions to be set up at federal level (market design, regulatory, support mechanisms) to reach the assessed potential, and their potential consequences at other decision levels.
Objectives
- Assess the impact and value: Assessment at national level, of the electrification of the heat demand via heat pumps, in 2030 and 2050. Heat pumps in combination with PV are seen both as an additional burden to the system (higher demand, higher decentralized production), and as a new flexibility resource to balance the Belgian electricity system by exploiting their flex through appropriate and practical control strategies. Furthermore, the project analyzes the potential of decentralized storage solutions (electrical and thermal) to complement the flexibility of heat pumps.
- Take the full picture: FlexMyHeat wants to understand the impacts of local grid constraints and upcoming local contractual frameworks (energy communities) on the above mentioned flexibility potential. This leads to additional elements, in the form of Local Restrictions constraining the maximal flexibility potential due to:
- Operational limits imposed by the local grid operator (e.g. peak shaving)
- Financial interests of the local contractual framework (e.g. cannibalization of flexibility by local contracts/self-sufficiency)
- Adapt the market: FlexMyHeat will propose demand response programs, as well as adapted flexibility services that can exploit the capabilities of the decentralized energy resources. This will include the proposition and quantitative evaluation of appropriate coordination mechanisms and associated control algorithms, at the various relevant timescales.
Scenarios
FlexMyHeat will quantitatively evaluate these objectives using the following scenarios:
- Business-as-usual: considering the heat pumps and possibly associated local storage as independent devices (i.e., no dynamic interaction from the grid side to exploit their flexibility)
- Unconstrained flexibility exploitation: this considers maximal adoption of the flexibility opportunities offered by the heat pump and storage devices, ignoring potential local grid constraints
- Flexibility operation with local restrictions: this will consider the “full picture” and thus combine the various flexibility incentives/mechanisms driven by the grid with local objectives.