From Scarcity to Security: The First Adequacy & Flexibility Assessment across MENA Region and Interconnected Operation Challenges

Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region, driven by the energy markets development, integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and policy efforts to decarbonize energy systems, monitoring and assessing power system adequacy becomes a crucial activity in ensuring security of supply. A power system is adequate when sufficient domestic production

(including from storage plants), and import capacity allows demand to be met at all times with appropriate reserve margin under normal conditions.

In this paper, we will investigate the power system’s adequacy for the first time in the MENA region specifically focusing on countries that are members of the Med-TSO association. The assessment is based on the probabilistic Monte Carlo approach, ensuring interzonal and intertemporal correlation of model variables, and considering the specificities of the assessed geographical perimeter. The hourly resolution has been implemented to reflect the variability of weather, as well as the randomness of supply and transmission outages. The adequacy assessment has been based on the following main indicators: • Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE) • Expected Energy Not Served (EENS) Furthermore, the integration of RES may lead to more pronounced ramps in the “residual load”

(demand minus variable renewable generation), necessitating flexible resources that can quickly adjust their output up or down as needed.

We will quantitatively assess the flexible resource requirements necessary to address the challenges outlined above. This approach will also provide insights into how these needs are expected to evolve over time and explore how interconnections with neighbouring countries could help mitigate these challenges. The flexibility assessments can be performed using hourly, daily, weekly, or yearly timeframes.

Considering that the interconnected grid can play a key role in a country's security of supply, and in order to assess its impact, we simulated two different scenarios. The first one is the isolated operation, where each country is analyzed independently, without relying on electricity imports from neighbouring systems. The second one is the interconnected operation, where countries can exchange electricity based on the available cross-border capacity. This comparison allows us to evaluate how much the international interconnections contribute to adequacy (by covering potential shortfalls in generation) and flexibility (by helping to balance the system during periods of high ramping or variability in renewable generation).