In this first episode of the 2023 season of The EU Projects Zone Podcast, Areti Ntaradimou talks to Gianluigi Migliavacca about the FlexPlan project and how it is going to play a role in Europe’s flexible energy transition, while at the same time helping create a secure and sustainable smart grid for Europe. Gianluigi Migliavacca, project manager at Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico (RSA SpA) is the coordinator of FlexPlan. By creating an innovative new methodology and a tool, Migliavacca explains, FlexPlan aims to support European system operators in performing mid-to-long-term planning studies. Focussing on three grid years (2030, 2040 and 2050), the project will consider system flexibility as an alternative to new grid investments. Naturally, a large part of the conversation revolves around Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and the push for a steadily increasing penetration to the grid infrastructure in Europe and the world. That is due – among other things – to the ambitious decarbonisation goals for 2050 and beyond. According to Migliavacca, especially for operators of the future, “RES is becoming a priority both for decarbonisation and for making possible to make Europe independent from fossil fuels”. This is also in line with the EU Commission’s directives. But since this kind of generation is characterised by high variability, it makes the electric grid operation much more complex and affected by uncertainty. There is indeed a high request for resources providing flexibility to the system. And this is what motivates the FlexPlan Horizon2020 project. Listen to the whole discussion and find out also how Migliavacca believes that the FlexPlan will facilitate the European energy transition according to the official mandates.

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