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The electricity consumption in the ASEAN (Association of East Asian Nations) region is one of the fastest growing in the world and will lead to a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the next decades. A decarbonization of the region's electricity supply is thus a very important measure when taking action on global climate change. This paper defines cost-optimal pathways towards a sustainable power system in the region by employing linear optimization. The proposed model simultaneously optimizes the required capacities and the hourly operation of generation, transmission, and storage. The obtained results show that all different kinds of renewable sources will have to be utilized, while none of them should have a share of more than one third. The findings give reason for setting up an ASEAN power grid, as it enables the transportation of electricity from the best sites to load centers and leads to a balancing of the fluctuations from wind and solar generation. We suggest fostering a diversified extension of renewables and to elaborate on political and technical solutions that enable the build up an transnational supergrid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Flexibility is the ability of a power system to respond to changes in power demand and generation. Integrating large shares of variable renewable energy sources, in particular wind and solar, can lead to a strong increase of flexibility requirements for the complementary system, traditionally hydrothermal, which has to balance the fluctuations of variable generation. We quantify these flexibility requirements at the operational timescale of 1–12 hours and different spatial scales across Europe. Our results indicate that three major factors determine the ramping flexibility needed in future power systems: the penetration of variable renewables, their mix and the geographic system size. Compared to the variability of load, flexibility requirements increase strongly in systems with combined wind and PV (photovoltaics) contribution of more than 30% of total energy and a share of PV in the renewables mix above 20–30%. In terms of extreme ramps, the flexibility requirements of a geographically large, transnational power system are significantly lower than of smaller regional systems, especially at high wind penetration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]