Energy storage and DSM opportunities in the future European power system

At present, European countries are seeking ways to reduce carbon emissions. To achieve this, they have set ambitious emissions reduction goals. Thus, in this paper, a novel strategic planning methodology is used in order to determine the most appropriate power system for Europe by the year 2050. The planning methodology jointly optimizes generation and transmission expansion alternatives considering renewable energy, energy storage and demand-side management, in order to minimize total costs. Technical and environmental aspects are considered by optimization model constraints. In this work, demand-side management is seen as an option to test the power system design under the assumption that a certain percentage of the load can be shifted. Moreover, sensitivity analyses are performed in order to evaluate the impact of different investment costs of storage technologies. Results show how different flexible demand levels, as well as different investment costs of storage technologies, technically and economically affects the future European power system.