VALUE OF CUSTOMER FLEXIBILITY REGARDING RELIABILITY OF SUPPLY IN THE RURAL AREA ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION

Customer flexibility plays a key role in the cost-efficient development of electricity distribution networks. Recently achieved results in a collaborative research project together with the academy and distribution utilities indicate that the economic value of flexibility can be significantly high in sparsely populated rural areas where there are challenges in reliability of supply (risk of major storms) and depopulation. The main target of this paper is to define the technical potential and economic value of customer flexibility in reliability of supply. The paper indicates that rural-area distribution networks offer a promising basis for flexibility. A significant proportion of distribution branch lines supply a relatively low number of customers. Thus, by selecting the best few per cent of all customers to the flexibility agreement, a relatively high share of network investments can be reconsidered from the perspective of scheduling, placement and technological choices of the network renewal. However, the results support a preliminary estimate that flexibility targets (customer nodes) have to be defined by the utility. Otherwise, if customer nodes are selected randomly, network areas committed to flexibility are not uniform enough to be able to take them effectively into account in the long-term development of the network infrastructure.