Joint Research Council of the European Commission
Key findings
This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the remaining barriers to the development of energy storage in EU energy markets. It noted in particular the barriers to the participation of storage and demand response to resolving congestion constraints and non-frequency ancillary services. It also notes that flexibility is starting to be acknowledged in network development planning, but important missing links still exist. In particular, what is lacking is a consolidated, systematic way to evaluate employment of flexibility against other alternatives. In this respect, the development of harmonised methodologies for incorporating flexibility solutions, including energy storage, into network development in the EU could prove very helpful. This issue also relates to fully implementing the EU legal framework on market-based congestion management as the “default” mechanism, with derogations only in very specific cases, for a “chicken and egg” problem ensues: a systematic evaluation of the economic efficiency of market-based flexibility alternatives lacks true price signals when such markets do not exist, and vice-versa, the need for such markets becomes less obvious when network planning implicitly favours traditional network expansion solutions. A further piece in this puzzle is the development of comprehensive regulatory frameworks that do not implicitly penalise the employment of flexibility by discriminating OPEX versus CAPEX, given that the costs for the procurement of flexibility services by network operators represent for them an Operational Expenditure.
Source : https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC144586/JRC144586_01.pdf (2025)
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