STUDY | Flexibility in thermal power plants
Policy Summary
The goal of limiting global warming to well below to
2°C can only be achieved if energy systems are almost
completely decarbonised over the long run. Renew-
able energies, especially wind and solar PV, are play-
ing a fundamental role to reach this goal. They have
witnessed rapid expansion in power systems world-
wide thanks to the immense cost reductions of the
last decade. Because of their variable output and zero
marginal generation costs, these technologies alter
the characteristics of electricity systems and markets.
Steeper and more variable residual loads increase the
flexibility requirements placed on the overall power
system, both on the supply and demand sides.
In several countries the development of renewable
energy is hampered after reaching a certain pene-
tration level, because of the belief that the existing
power system cannot cope with the weather-
dependent generation of wind and solar power.
As a result, renewable energy curtailment has been on
the rise in various power systems, with priority given
to baseload operation of conventional generation
technologies. While it is true that conventional power
systems were not built to adjust to quickly changing
patterns on the supply side, system operators around
the world have learned to apply different flexible
resources that complement growing shares of
variable renewable energy. There are many potential
sources of flexibility, including cross-border energy
trading, demand side management, storage tech-
nologies, flexible biomass/biogas, and the flexible
operation of conventional generation technologies,
like gas and coal.
Regarding coal-fired power plants, it is widely
assumed that they cannot be operated to flexibly
adapt to varying system loads without costly rede-
sign measures or losses in efficiency. However,
the contrary is the case, as we show in this report.
In actual fact, augmenting the flexibility of conven-
tional power plants represents a major strategy for
effectively integrating large shares of renewables.
This is especially true in systems characterised by
few other flexibility options and/or very high shares
of existing inflexible power plants, for instance in
Poland and South Africa. In those countries, existing
conventional power plants will continue to play a role
during the transition to a deeply decarbonised power
system. However, the generation output of these
power plants will need to adjust to the generation of
variable renewables.
In the long run, however, fossil-fuel power plants,
especially coal-fired plants, will need to be replaced
altogether with less CO2 intensive technologies if
international emission-reduction targets are to be
met.
1. Existing coal power plants can
technically provide much more
flexibility than many think,
as shown by experiences in countries
like Germany and Denmark.
In countries like Germany, hard coal-fired power
plants, and to some extent lignite-fired power plants,
are already providing significant operational flexibil-
ity, adjusting their output to variation in renewable
energy feed-in and demand (see figure 1).
At the power plant level, operational flexibility is
characterised by three main features: the overall
bandwidth of operation (ranging between minimum
and maximum load), the speed at which net power
feed-in can be adjusted (ramp rate), and the time
required to attain stable operation when starting up
from standstill (start-up time) (see figure 2).
State-of-the-art power plants have significantly
improved flexibility characteristics. As illustrated
in Figure S3 (left), state-of-the-art hard coal
power plants can operate at minimum load levels
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Agora Energiewende | Flexibility in thermal power plants

of 25–40 percent of nominal load. State-of-the-art
lignite power plants can achieve minimum loads of
35–50 percent of nominal load. By contrast, power
plants built ten to twenty years ago in industrial-
ised countries had minimum load levels of 40 per-
cent (hard coal) to 60 percent (lignite). Retrofitting
can reduce minimum loads even further; in Germany,
for example, minimum load levels of 12 percent have
been achieved. Older coal power plants designed
mainly for baseload operation, especially in countries
like China or India, can have much higher minimum
load levels, significantly limiting the bandwidth of
their operation. The ramp rate of state-of-the-art
coal power plants (hard coal and lignite) can reach
6 percent of nominal load per minute, equalling or
exceeding the ramp rate of the most-common CCGTs.
The ramp rate of the most-common hard coal power
plants in industrial countries is significantly lower,

Power generation from nuclear, hard coal and lignite power plants and demand in Germany,
23 to 30 March 2016 Figure S1

100
90
80
70
60
[GW]

50
40
30
20
10
0
26. Mar

28. Mar

30. Mar
29. Mar
24. Mar
23. Mar

25. Mar

27. Mar

demand Hard Coal Lignite Nuclear

Agora Energiewende (2017)

Qualitative representation of key flexibility parameters of a power plant Figure S2

100 PNom
Ramp rate
PNet [% PNom ]

PNet

30 PMin

Minimum load
0
Start-up time t [h]

Fichtner (2017)

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