R&D NESTER is one of the partners involved in the publication of a new scientific paper in ENERGIES journal. The paper, entitled "The Innovative FlexPlan Grid-Planning Methodology: How Storage and Flexible Resources Could Help in De-Bottlenecking the European System" has as the objective of giving a general overview of the methodologies used in the project, as well as presenting the study cases considered. The paper has open access and is available at: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/4/1194.

FlexPlan aims to create an innovative grid-planning tool that allows including flexibility sources as alternatives to traditional grid reinforcement measures, applicable to transmission and distribution grids. The expansion candidates are evaluated in a multi-period timeframe (2030, 2040 and 2050) and selected through a multi-objective cost benefit analysis. The tool also considers the utilization of stochastic contingency analysis methods and considers as well the variability of renewable sources through a multi scenario analysis, including Monte Carlo variants. Simulated network models correspond to six regional cases covering a large part of Europe, allowing to demonstrate the tool capabilities in real cases of relevant size and complexity.

R&D NESTER contributed to the creation and publication of the paper by performing a summary description of the methodology used to create the network models and energy scenarios to be simulated in the regional use cases, as well as identifying all necessary data to the execution of these simulations. This work is developed by R&D NESTER as leader of Work Package 5, which is dedicated to the simulation of the project regional cases.

FlexPlan project is financed by H2020 and is developed in a consortium composed of 13 partners, including three TSOs and one DSO. R&D NESTER and REN are active members of this consortium.

All FlexPlan details can be accessed in https://flexplan-project.eu/.