The value of now, later, or never: assessing the value of electricity users' flexibility

The power grid faces a rising challenge of increasing variability due to the integration of intermittent renewable energy sources (RES) and the connection of more and new types of loads. This development heightens the risk of both capacity shortage and grid congestion, addressing the need to complement traditional grid extension, which is expensive and can take a long time. A promising approach is load flexibility, which is the ability of an electricity user to adjust its consumption during a set time interval. This study proposes a Flexibility Value Index (FVI) to rank electricity users based on the value of their potential flexibility. The FVI utilizes three indicators derived from a user's consumption and the local grid's load. The FVI is demonstrated on seven test profiles, followed by ranking five different types of users from Uppsala Municipality, Sweden, during winter working days. The study reveals a spread in the FVI, and the ranked list enables a public entity or a grid owner to focus resources on the users that can potentially realize the most flexibility. Furthermore, the FVI can be utilized on the production from RES, indicating which might be a suitable match to enhance the grid's hosting capacity.