Value of decentralized flexibility

Commissioned by ZVEI

Anselm Eicke, Lion Hirth, Jonathan Mühlenpfordt

2024

Small-scale flexibility from EVs, heat pumps, and home batteries is widely acknowledged as a core ingredient of future energy systems, but scale-up is sluggish. For the industry association ZVEI, we quantified the system value of flexible operation with a numerical Python model: smart operation of a heat pump cuts system costs by 24%, smart EV charging by more than 70%, while classic self-consumption optimization of home batteries yields almost no system benefit. Market-driven flexibility currently tends to relieve rather than burden distribution grids. We also developed market design and regulatory reform options. This report was originally published in German.